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Tonight on Dateline. Kaylee, Zanna, Maddie and Ethan, they would come over to our apartment all the time.
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In a sense, it still doesn't feel real. This is someone that we've never seen before, didn't even know about.
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Police department, search warrant, come to the door! A surprise indictment just this week in the baffling murders of four college students
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in Idaho. Brian! Brian, what are you doing? Now Dateline's uncovered exclusive new information about the suspect.
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Hello. I am Officer Llangus. Intriguing new video, revealing new details. When a photo popped up, I said, I know that guy.
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I believe he'd been there before. In the house? Yeah. He knew where they slept. What would make them targets?
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They were the type of woman he could never have. Was his own family suspicious? Our source says several members of the family actually went outside to look for evidence.
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If this individual is the right one, he picked the wrong family. We're ready for this case.
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You're inside this heartbreaking mystery like never before. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Here's Keith Morrison with The Killings on King Road. It all as ever just goes on.
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Nature folds over the horror. The earth sprouts a coat of green. and new graduates have received their diplomas at the University of Idaho.
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You are now graduates, so it's time to move your tassels from the right to the left.
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Joy tarnished by the undertow of their very own, Annis Herribilis. They should still be here, you know.
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This is Kayla DeWen talking about Kaylee Gonsalves and Maddie Mogan. Murdered, along with Zana Kurnodal and Ethan Chapin,
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in that now infamous off-campus house on King Road, just behind Kayla's apartment building.
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It just hurts. Four friends stabbed to death, allegedly by this man, Brian Koberger,
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a criminology grad student at nearby Washington State University. Had you ever seen Brian Koberger before at all?
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No. Never heard of him? Never seen him before. This is literally a stranger. These days, Koberger sits alone in a cell less than a mile from campus,
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here in the Lataw County Jail, presumed innocent unless proven guilty. Well, the legal process swirls around him.
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This is State of Idaho versus Brian Koberger. He had already been charged with four counts of first-degree murder
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and one of burglary for entering the house on King Road, was awaiting a preliminary hearing
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scheduled for next month. And then this week, a grand jury eliminated the need for that hearing
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by formally indicting Koberger. He'll appear in court Monday to be arraigned and to enter a plea.
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The indictment itself remains under seal. An official gag order has slowed information
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to a trickle, but as you will hear, we have learned things, including exclusive information
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from a source with inside knowledge of the investigation about the infamous K-Bar knife,
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the murder weapon, for one thing, and its sheath, the one the killer left behind.
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Hello. How you doing? How y'all doing today? Also, the untold real story behind two curious traffic stops.
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Where are you headed? As Brian Koberger and his father drove home for Christmas.
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We'll tell you what police have learned about events inside the Koberger home in the days before the arrest,
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and why some members of the family may not have been so surprised when agents descended en masse just before New Year's Eve.
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And? It never even occurred to me that that was actually something wrong. We'll show you a newly released body cam video
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of Brian Koberger during a traffic stop a month before the murders. But before we get to that,
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The void, the ache, is still very real for those who are lost. Kayla feels it for her friend Kaylee.
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She was one of the girls that made me feel kind of like safe, and she was always that positive, like loyal, jokester, prankster friend, I guess,
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that I feel like everyone needed in their lives. Especially, of course, Kaylee Gonsalves' parents, Steve and Christy.
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You could wake her up in the middle of the night and say, hey, pack your bags, we're going to Mexico in the morning.
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And she'd be like, are you serious? Let's go. Kaylee was 21, a month from graduation.
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She'd officially moved out of the house on King Road, had lined up an IT job in Texas.
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Ethan Chapin was 20. Tall, athletic, going places, the firstborn of triplets. His sibling is now without their anchor.
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His parents are brokenhearted. I've said it a hundred times, but I miss him dearly.
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If we touch as many lives as he did in his 20 years, this world would be a better place.
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Ethan's girlfriend, Zanna Kurnodl, also 20, was a magnet on campus friend to the friendless the one everybody knew and everybody liked Zanna also worked part at the Mad Greek restaurant in downtown Moscow as did her
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roommate Maddie Mogan. Maddie was our family as well. Kaylee's parents can't talk about their own daughter without talking about Maddie.
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These girls were best friends since sixth grade, like inseparable. So why them? Why these four innocents?
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Our search for answers will take us across the country and back through time. But it begins here, in young, open lives on campus.
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People who loved and lived on social media. Tell me about the social media sites that you and the others there would have used.
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I think mostly Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok. Here are Kaylee and her roommates imitating each other in a TikTok video.
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Did anyone do their chores today? I'm just going to do it. You put up some videos yourself, didn't you?
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Probably on TikTok, yeah. Hey Siri, what's the weather look like? It looks like you're going to need an umbrella. It's a little bit drippy.
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Of course, this is how life is lived. for millions out loud where everybody can see,
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no matter what a secret observer's motive might be. Do people randomly approach you on social media?
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Yes. People you don't know? Yes. Would they have known where you were when you uploaded something?
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I would say yes. We can't know yet why these four, or one of these four, were targeted.
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Well, there have been reports that Brian Koberger was following some of the victims,
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even messaging some of the victims on social media, our source says that's not correct.
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But was one or more of them stalked on social media? Quite possibly, said this man.
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And here is how. We don't know what's going on behind the screens of these little devices
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that we carry around, but those devices are tracking your location. They're tied to social media.
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This is James Samuel, ex-fighter pilot. once worked for the government agency that helped find Osama bin Laden.
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We asked him about geotagging, that bit of tech that identifies precisely where and when photos and videos were made.
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It can be turned off, but among students at the University of Idaho, it rarely was.
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With your geotag on and using social media, you can do one post, and then if you have several thousand followers,
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they can, to a large degree, all immediately know where you are, and if they want to meet up with you, then they can just show up.
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Do you believe that their social media presence, the students there at the University of Idaho,
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was used by a predator to target them? I think in the 21st century, if there is a predator,
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they're going to understand the power of social media and the fact that the geotags are there to show the location of their potential victims.
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So four students went about their lives blissfully unaware that someone was likely watching, stalking them.
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Was it someone, police have wondered, who had a score to settle? Brian! Brian, what are you doing?
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Ever since Brian Koberger was charged with murdering Kaylee and Maddie and Zanna and Ethan in Moscow, Idaho, last November,
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there have been so many questions. Perhaps the biggest one? Just who is he? As Koberger sits in jail,
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indicted for murder, but by no means convicted, his whole life is under a microscope.
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He kept to himself. He was an awkward kid, said childhood friend Casey Arnst, overweight and socially challenged.
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He might have got picked on because he seemed like a weird kid with no friends. Picked on, often.
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and made fun of by girls. But our first real glimpse into Koberger's own teenage mind
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comes directly from him, in online posts starting in late 2009, around the time he turned 15,
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something like 13 years before the murders. Quoting now, I always wonder what a normal person would be doing
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while I sit there and suffer. This in a forum for people enduring a condition called
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Visual snow. Visual snow is a term that is used to describe the experience of looking at the visual field
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and seeing it as if it's sort of pixelated or as if there are little dots. Dr. Gary Brucato is a clinical psychologist and a co-creator of the Columbia University Mass Murder Database.
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He's also a visiting scholar at Boston College. Dr. Brucato has not examined Brian Koberger, but he has followed the case closely.
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There are all sorts of possible reasons why a person might experience visual snow.
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He did experience, by his own report, a sort of stew of vague symptoms, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, dissociative symptoms, and this visual snow that really came together to make him feel broken.
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Was that broken feeling behind Kohlberger's use of marijuana and heroin? We don't know.
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we do know though that he spent time in rehab and as for his weight he wrote online that he felt
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like an organic sack of meat with no self-worth and then he lost more than a hundred pounds
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before graduating from high school the interesting thing i think about kohlberger as a suspect
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is that he tried everything under the sun to try to get people to like him or to understand him If I lose weight people will like me If I do well in school people will like me
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If I post about my mental health issues on the Internet, perhaps I'll garner sympathy.
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Kohlberger comments further about battling demons, wandering the streets feeling like a criminal.
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Comments which caught the attention of retired FBI profiler Greg Cooper. In my mind, he's already contemplating and visualizing himself as a criminal.
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Years and years before. Years and years before. And eventually he starts to identify with them.
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After high school, Kohlberger attended Northampton Community College, where, as best we can tell, sometime in 2016, this woman said she met him.
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Hey, it's me, the girl that went on a Tinder date with Brian. Her name is Haley Ouellette.
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She made this TikTok video about their date, which, she said, started with a movie.
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And then when they got back to her dorm room, it got strange. He kept trying to touch me, not inappropriately, just trying to tickle me and rub my shoulders and stuff.
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And I was like, why are you touching me or what are you doing? And he would just get super serious and he's like, I'm not.
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The young woman said she got out of the date by going to a bathroom and pretending to be sick.
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He ended up messaging me on Tinder that he was going to go. And then about an hour later, he texted me and said I had good birthing hips.
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Odd? Perhaps. But to Dr. Brucato, the online posts, the social awkwardness, hint at something deeper.
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With individuals like this, what you tend to see are things like feelings of isolation.
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feeling pushed around by other people. And then at some point, the individual begins to experience
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very rich, intense fantasies of leveling the playing field. In the fall of 2018, Brian Koberger, then 23 years old,
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enrolled here, DeSales University, a private Catholic school 45 miles from his home in Pennsylvania.
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And it was at DeSales that he met Josh Ferraro. This guy, I recognized him right away as new.
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And in the biology class, I said, hey, do you want to be my partner? And so they were partners on a lab project for a semester.
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Here's their final report. I took a photo of him looking at a microscope. I took a photo of him writing.
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I was like, dude, stop laughing. I'm trying to take your photo. This needs to look good for the project.
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And he immediately turned it off. and he just deadpan and just posed. He posed for the photo so seriously.
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Remembering Kohlberger, Ferraro used those words again. Odd, awkward, and also a bit of a know-it-all.
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It's his way or the highway. Don't mess this up and we'll have no problems. DeSales was also where Kohlberger met this classmate named Madison.
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I would always catch him staring at us. To her and her classmates, Koberger wasn't scary at all, just a loner who was a little different.
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I didn't take it in a creepy way at all. It was just kind of like one of those things that he did that we were like, OK, it's just Brian kind of being Brian.
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Brian Koberger finished his bachelor's degree in 2020, just in time for the start of the pandemic.
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and so when he decided to pursue a master's degree in criminal justice his studies were all online
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which will bring up questions later about where he was all that time and also what he took away from his studies
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under Dr. Catherine Ramsland one of the nation's leading authorities on the subject of serial killers
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one in particular Dennis Rader the killer who called himself BTK. I saw the Ramsland name and I was like, seriously?
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It's a piece of the mystery surrounding Brian Kohlberger. What drew him to the study of criminal justice?
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and, in particular, to her class. DeSales University's Dr. Catherine Ramsland told Dateline
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that she would not speak to us about Kohlberger, but she did confirm that in a class she teaches
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on the subject of extreme violence, a class Kohlberger took, one of her books is required reading.
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It's called Confession of a Serial Killer, the untold story of Dennis Rader, the BTK killer.
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Hello, Dennis. In 2022, Ramsland appeared in a docuseries about her book, Speaking on the Phone, to Rader.
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So your fantasy life was more important to you than your real life, it sounds like.
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Well, I guess to the degree it was. BTK stands for Bind, Torture, Kill. The nickname Rader gave himself to toy with investigators during his decades-long string of murders from 1974 to his arrest in 2005.
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You are Dennis L. Rader? Yes, sir. He is serving 10 consecutive life prison terms.
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And this is his daughter, Carrie Rawson. Did you have any idea whatsoever that your dad was doing that stuff?
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No, there's no way we would have known. I mean, if we had had any idea whatsoever,
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the very first thing you would have done would have been ran out of your house and gone to the police.
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Carrie is a victim advocate now and a self survivor What did it do to your life this discovery Ugh everything He was like my best friend
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It's unfathomable. It still doesn't make sense this many years later. In an effort to understand her own trauma and her own father,
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Carrie became something of a self-educated expert on the subject of murder, devouring books about serial killers,
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including, of course, that one written on her father's case by Dr. Ramsland, Brian Kohlberger's professor.
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What did you think when you first heard that he had taken classes from her, from the person who wrote a book about your father?
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It hit close to home. I saw the Ramsland name, and I was like, seriously? That Kohlberger would have been studying her father's life was strange enough to her,
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but Kohlberger's field of study, criminal justice, was very similar to her father's.
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My dad was literally committing murders and then going to school at night. So he was literally talking to the investigators that were investigating his own murders in the 70s.
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Carrie Rawson said some of her dad's problems were evident as a teenager, even to himself.
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So my dad said in high school he tried to go on dates, but he was kind of awkward,
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and then he would get really fixated on a woman and make her uncomfortable. BTK felt rejected by women.
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So, by all reports, did Brian Koberger. It's not uncommon for men who commit serious offenses,
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particularly against women, particularly involving murder, to have experienced rejection by women that they sort of come to see as a collective mass
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that doesn't appreciate them or that they have a kind of generalized disdain. for women. Brian Koberger. In June 2022, Brian Koberger received his master's degree in criminal
00:19:53
justice from DeSales University. But before he completed his studies, he posted a research
00:19:59
survey on Reddit. The survey was filled with questions for convicted criminals. Questions like,
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did you commit the crime alone? Why did you choose that victim or target over others?
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And you secretly commit a felony. What is the likelihood that you would feel remorse about breaking the law?
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Was it part of his coursework? We don't know. But it's all intriguing for forensic psychologists like Dr. Gary Brocato.
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I think the idea is that they represent a blueprint of what it is he wanted to understand about himself.
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In July 2022, four months before the killings on King Road, Brian Koberger pointed his soon-to-be infamous 2015 white Hyundai Elantra
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toward the town of Pullman and its Washington State University. And riding along as he crossed the country, Dateline has learned,
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was an item that would play an outsized role in his future. Before he received his master's degree from DeSales,
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a month before, our source tells us, police have found that Brian Koberger went online and visited Amazon.com.
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to buy a couple of items. A knife, a K-Bar, advertised as the best fixed-blade knife in the world
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for hunting, sporting, military. And a knife sheath. Longtime FBI profiler Greg Cooper has a theory.
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What did that say to you about the kind of thinking that had gone into this? Fantasy.
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He's been thinking about committing crimes for a long time. With that knife? Absolutely.
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He has to become familiar with it. feel at ease with it. Kohlberger and that knife traveled 2,500 miles
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until he reached his new home in Pullman, Washington and Washington State University,
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where he would study for his doctorate in criminology. Is it the kind of place where a person would want to go to do a Ph.D.?
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Yes, it is. This is retired FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer. She's followed the case closely.
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Not that many schools have all three levels. You know, the bachelor's, the master's, and the Ph.D.
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And it's pretty well regarded. So perhaps that reputation is what drew Kohlberger West.
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Or maybe something else. Whoever it is that committed these murders, it's like being a casting agent that goes out to find someone who looks the part.
00:22:41
One thing the police already know about Brian Koberger is that he was interested in what they did.
00:22:50
In fact, in the spring of 2022, seven months before the murders, about the time Koberger, our source tells us, bought that K-Bar knife on Amazon,
00:23:00
he also interviewed online for an internship with the Pullman, Washington Police Department.
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Police say Koberger had interest in assisting rural law enforcement agencies with how to better collect and analyze technical data in public safety operations.
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Retired FBI agent Jennifer Coffendaffer. What the heck does that mean? Oh, he wanted to get on the inside to see what all they could see. That's what I think.
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Was it an internship related to his studies? Or was there a deeper purpose? What are they looking at? What are they capable of?
00:23:40
That lens that only people from the inside of law enforcement have. But he didn't get the job.
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Instead, Koberger was hired as a teaching assistant for one of his professors. The class was called Criminal Procedures.
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This is student Koberger. Hayden Stinchfield. Throughout the semester, he kept grading us down.
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He just kept on applying Ph.D. standards to our 300-level work. He graded them harshly?
00:24:11
Yeah, definitely. He wanted us to read his mind and put down exactly what he would have said.
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But Kohlberger's activities were not limited to academics. It was quite clear, investigators discovered, that he was often somewhere else.
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Repeatedly, police say, Koberger left home, usually at night, and drove the nearly 10-mile
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stretch of highway between Pullman and another college town, Moscow, home of the University
00:24:41
of Idaho, to a particular neighborhood just off campus where investigators believe he had
00:24:48
found something he had been seeking. Since the murders, several questions have bedeviled investigators.
00:24:57
Why is there a connection between Brian Koberger and the victims in the house? And how did he become aware of them?
00:25:04
What made the man accused of their murders focus so strongly, police were wondering,
00:25:09
on those who lived in the house on King Road? The very questions Dr. Gary Brucato has studied in many cases over the years.
00:25:18
whoever it is that committed these murders it's like being a casting agent that goes out to find
00:25:24
someone who looks the part you hone in on that individual and the idea is to kind of live out a
00:25:30
perfect fantasy what you tend to see are long-standing uh fantasies where there is a group
00:25:37
of people or a type of person who has made you feel slighted and you fixate on an individual
00:25:41
that sort of fits the role in your fantasy that individual is the one for whom dr brucato coined
00:25:48
a new term in his research, a person he calls the prototype. What I mean is, who was the first person in this individual's life
00:25:56
who rejected them and made them feel this way? And sometimes the prototype even looks like the victims.
00:26:04
There are some obvious traits that jump out. Right. Did Koberger somehow become, as many have speculated,
00:26:12
fixated on either Kaylee Gonsalves or Maddie Mogan? And if so, why? Retired FBI profiler Greg Cooper offers this possible explanation.
00:26:25
They had a lot of social presence. He became aware of them at some point. And for him, I think they represented socially everything that he is not.
00:26:34
Yeah, and was locked out of. Absolutely. Kaylee's friend, Kayla, wondered if Kohlberger crossed paths with Maddie
00:26:43
and roommate Zanna Kornodel here. at the Mad Greek restaurant in Moscow, where the women waited tables.
00:26:50
The restaurant offered vegan dishes, and Kohlberger was vegan. I know for us, like, we kind of believe that
00:26:59
Zanna and Maddie, like, worked at Mad Greek. We all thought that it was something happening from there.
00:27:06
That's one theory. Or perhaps the alleged killer spotted the women in the house on King Road somewhere else.
00:27:14
You could discover somebody on social media or online from a very great distance.
00:27:18
You suspect something like that may be involved here? A kind of a stalking on the internet?
00:27:23
I think that there was definitely a long-term stalking of at least one of these victims
00:27:27
and a kind of a peculiar sense of sharing an intimacy that didn't exist. Again, we don't know if Brian Korberger harmed anyone.
00:27:37
But we do know that he had interactions with police, including this one, caught on newly released police body cam.
00:27:45
Hi, I'm Officer Luangus. Stopped being audio and video recorded. I think you know why I stopped you.
00:27:50
You ran the red light. What actually happened was I was stuck in the middle of the intersection.
00:27:54
This video, released two weeks ago, shows Koberger being pulled over in Pullman a month before the murders
00:27:59
for entering an intersection, then turning left after the light turned red. It never even occurred to me that that was actually something wrong.
00:28:08
I'm actually just from a very rural area, so we just don't have crosswalks. Oh. Unless I visit an area where there are crosswalks, and then it's not very frequent.
00:28:19
Yeah. I do apologize if I was asking you too many questions about the law. I wasn't trying to, like...
00:28:25
No, no, no, not at all. This time, Kohlberger drove away without a ticket. But we do know that shortly before this incident,
00:28:32
Kohlberger got a traffic ticket in Moscow, just before midnight for failure to wear a seat belt.
00:28:39
The ticket was issued at an intersection about a mile and a half from the house on King Road.
00:28:45
And now Kohlberger's phone, his electronics, have told police that was the first of 12 trips Kohlberger made to Moscow
00:28:52
and the area near King Road before the murders, at least once close enough to connect to house Wi-Fi.
00:28:59
So now, investigators are starting to look at other strange events around King Road.
00:29:06
And then I found my underwear, like, shoved right there. In the cup holder? Yeah, and I took it out.
00:29:12
It was in there. The thing is, there is research. Tons of it. It's what profilers like Greg Cooper rely on
00:29:34
in cases like the Moscow murders. And the research is quite clear, they say, that those who commit serial crimes progress.
00:29:44
through a series of predictable events, phases in the years before the murders occur.
00:29:52
They don't wake up in the morning and go out and commit a crime like this This has occurred mentally over a long haul over a long period of time And so there have been most likely crimes committed in the past
00:30:05
nuisance types of crimes that you'd expect. As Carrie Rawson told us, her father, Dennis Rader,
00:30:13
the serial killer known as BTK, self-reported his own progression in that confessional book by Dr. Ramsland.
00:30:23
My dad talks a lot about, like, early on, by the time he was seven or eight, like, window peeping and wanting to be in, like, collect women's lingerie, still that.
00:30:32
We know, too, with my dad, he said he was breaking and entering into his old school, like, by the time he was 12.
00:30:38
Now, again, the investigators who've looked into Brian Koberger's past, of course,
00:30:42
are not talking to us about what they have found. But there have been incidents in Moscow, very near to where the murders occurred.
00:30:51
Incidents that have certainly led to questions. This is Moscow police body cam footage from March 2022, a full eight months before the murders.
00:31:07
Police were called to a home that students call King Cabin. It's home to members of the Alpha Phi sorority.
00:31:15
Anyway. Awesome, thank you. This young woman's friend was about to walk outside one weekday morning and...
00:31:23
I asked my roommate if she's in the middle of the road. I was like, hey, did you bring my suitcase up?
00:31:26
And she's like, yeah, it was in the middle of the road. And I was like, hmm, that's weird.
00:31:31
Oh, your suitcase was in the middle of the road? Odd. Okay. Especially since the night before she'd left it packed with clothes inside the car.
00:31:40
And I had it in the back of my car. Oh, interesting. I was like, maybe I forgot and just left it out.
00:31:45
Right. I take it inside and I open it. All the stuff I had up here, all my pay stubs, the stuff I had in the center console,
00:31:53
my sunglasses I was literally wearing yesterday were all shoved inside my suitcase.
00:31:57
And it was zipped back up. So everything that you had in your front seat was now in your suitcase?
00:32:02
But even stranger, something that had been in her suitcase had ended up... Listen to this.
00:32:11
And then I found my underwear shoved right there. It's in the cup holder? Yeah, and I took it out and put it in there.
00:32:18
Yes, the young woman's underwear had been taken from the suitcase and stuffed in the cup holder.
00:32:26
At the time, and to these officers, the incident seemed of little significance. There's kind of been like an uptick recently in like we've had a couple vehicles stolen.
00:32:35
We've had people's cars getting broken into. One in a string of vehicle thefts or attempted thefts near the campus,
00:32:43
except this one involved women's underwear. It's just freaky. Yeah, no, it's definitely eerie.
00:32:50
And even more eerie. In the background of this footage, you can see it. The strange incident occurred just steps away from the house
00:32:58
where the murders would take place eight months later. Those facts alone may the experts we've talked to sit up in their chairs
00:33:06
and erase questions, assuming that whoever did this was male. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a piece of underwear that's missing.
00:33:16
I'd be surprised if there was not. It's personal, it's intimate, and it allows him to also play mind games and create concern and fear.
00:33:28
To be clear again, Moscow police have not indicated any connection between Brian Koberger and this incident,
00:33:35
which occurred four months before we know Koberger took up residence in nearby Pullman, Washington.
00:33:40
So it may in fact be nothing. unrelated to the quadruple homicide case to come, something else altogether.
00:33:48
But here's what we do know. This incident took place in March, and we know that very month,
00:33:55
Koberger had already decided to attend Washington State, had already applied for that internship
00:34:01
with the Pullman Police Department. And at the time, Koberger was finishing his master's degree
00:34:07
at DeSales in Pennsylvania, and those studies were all being done online. He could have been anywhere.
00:34:15
Oh, we can't rule it out. We can't rule it out because we really don't know where he was.
00:34:21
And there were more strange incidents in Moscow before the murders when we know that Brian Koberger was a student at Washington State.
00:34:30
Hey, ladies, how's it going? Leaving questions like, who exactly attended these parties at the house on King Road?
00:34:43
Things happened. Odd things looking back. Things involving Brian Koberger at Washington State
00:35:01
University. As the 2022 academic year began, Koberger added to his studies with a job as a
00:35:08
teaching assistant. But soon, the New York Times has reported, female students complained that
00:35:14
Koberger made them uncomfortable. One accused him of following her to her car. But Dateline has
00:35:21
learned new details of another incident that are disturbing. Our source says Koberger had befriended
00:35:28
a woman in his graduate criminology cohort. The woman had returned to her apartment one evening
00:35:35
and found some things amiss. Items moved from where she'd left them, in the kitchen, in the bath.
00:35:43
Quite bizarre. So what did she do? Well, our source tells us that since nothing had been taken,
00:35:51
the woman did not call the police. Instead she called her new friend Brian Koberger who our source says volunteered to come over and take a look And he soon recommended the installation of a video security system
00:36:06
And he, Koberger, volunteered to do the work. After the installation, our source says, police believe Koberger, if he was close enough to the woman's apartment,
00:36:15
could pull up the cameras himself for a look. Because Koberger knew the woman's Wi-Fi password.
00:36:22
Our source tells us that Brian Koberger is now considered a strong suspect in the break-in.
00:36:29
Hearing that, retired FBI profiler Greg Cooper offers this theory. What does that say to you?
00:36:36
I would expect that he orchestrated the whole thing. He was not looking upon her as a potential victim necessarily.
00:36:43
That he orchestrated it so that she would come to him, that he would be able to help her.
00:36:48
and it is also another level of power and domination and control over another person.
00:36:55
The hero kind of image that he can portray. You've got this problem. I'm here to solve the problem for you and make it better for you.
00:37:03
It becomes a light and shiny armor. Absolutely. And if it was Brian Kohlberger, it was also, Cooper said,
00:37:11
a way to raise the ante, a step in the progression. meaning that going into a house where the occupant is absent,
00:37:20
the research on serial murderers shows, anyway, can be a prelude to next entering a house where the occupant is present.
00:37:28
If Kohlberger did commit the murders, which we must remind you again he is only accused of,
00:37:35
Cooper theorizes that in the days and weeks before, Kohlberger was surveilling the house from the yard
00:37:41
during at least some of those 12 trips police say Koberger made to Moscow. He's a lurker looking through windows, peering, surveilling, peeping.
00:37:53
He has to engage in those kinds of things that are going to strengthen his courage
00:37:58
in order to commit the crime and commit it successfully. But Cooper's decades of experience in the field
00:38:04
allow him to take his theories even one step further. You may remember this. The house on King Road had been the regular setting of large parties and noise complaints,
00:38:17
like this one three months before the murders, as shown on this Moscow police body cam.
00:38:23
Good, is this your place? Yeah. Perfect. That is Kayleigh talking to the officers.
00:38:29
Hey, ladies, how's it going? Here's another party in September, two months before the murders.
00:38:35
For this particular party, none of the actual residents was even present. All right, can you hear me, Matty?
00:38:40
Although officers eventually did reach Maddie Mogan on the phone. I'm good. I'm just a pressure. I'm also so sorry once again.
00:38:50
Cooper, based on his experience, thinks the killer might even have entered the house during one of these parties
00:38:57
to take a look around without any of the young women who lived there even knowing.
00:39:03
I believe, personally, that he'd been in that house before. He knew where they slept. He knew who was in which bedroom.
00:39:10
He shows up in a group of people and watches, monitors, and imagines. It's a very disturbing idea that a person would be a target of someone like that and not be aware of it for a period of time.
00:39:24
Absolutely. Very much so. And investigators believe that for the killer, it would all come to a head on a Saturday night in November.
00:39:33
The hunt was over. The targets acquired. November 12, 2022. It was a Saturday. And on the campus of the University of Idaho in Moscow,
00:40:00
it was game day. The Vandals, as they're known, would be playing a football game.
00:40:07
Before the game, Kaylee Gonsalves' friend Kayla had a get-together at her apartment
00:40:13
just in front of that now infamous house on King Road. They came over like around noon
00:40:21
and we were all just like having fun, talking, socializing. Does your mind go back to that, that day?
00:40:30
Yeah, I always like replay like the conversations that I had with like Kaylee and Zanna.
00:40:36
Yeah, she was talking to me and another friend about something stupid. And like she brought up my random like cooking videos and just talking about like how much she loved them and how she thought it was so funny.
00:40:52
Yeah. You carry that around with you even now? That was the last time you talked to her?
00:40:57
Mm-hmm. Later that night, around 9 p.m., Kaylee posted a series of photos on her Instagram account,
00:41:05
including this now-famous photo of the five King Road residents along with Zanna's boyfriend, Ethan.
00:41:13
In what would be the last social media post of her young life, Kaylee wrote, One lucky girl to be surrounded by these people every day.
00:41:23
In the photo were Kaylee and her lifelong best friend Maddie Mogan, Zanna Kurnodal and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin.
00:41:33
Two more roommates filled out the frame, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funk. That Saturday night all had plans.
00:41:41
Ethan and Zanna were attending a party at the nearby Sigma Chi fraternity house.
00:41:47
Kaylee and Maddie went to hang out at the Corner Club in downtown Moscow, arriving sometime after 10 p.m.
00:41:53
Three and a half hours later around 1 a the two women left the bar together walked a couple of blocks to a place called Grub Truck and got some food as you can see in this video
00:42:07
Hi. Welcome back. Kaylee's father, Steve, and mother, Christy. It just kills me, knowing that they were about to walk into what they walked into.
00:42:16
They had no idea what was about to happen. At precisely 1.49 a.m., one of the women called for a young fraternity member who'd been assigned to help drive home upperclassmen and women to make sure they arrived safely.
00:42:33
A ride of a little more than a mile. They arrived at the house on King Road at 1.56 a.m.
00:42:40
Galey and Maddie were doing everything right that night. They were together. They had a safe ride home. They weren't out there, you know.
00:42:48
Coming back from a club, doing any risky behavior, out on dates, there was nothing.
00:42:54
Roommate Zanna and her boyfriend Ethan were already back from their party. And by 2 a.m., all six, including roommates Dylan and Bethany, were safely home, but not yet asleep.
00:43:07
In fact, starting at 2.26 a.m., Kaylee and Maddie made a total of 10 phone calls to Kaylee's former boyfriend.
00:43:15
What no one knew at the time was that just across the border in Pullman, police later revealed, a cell phone clicked off or into airplane mode.
00:43:26
The cell phone linked to Brian Koberger. The time, 2.47 a.m. Six minutes later, traffic cameras caught a white Elantra approaching an intersection in Pullman.
00:43:39
Police aren't releasing that video to us, but we know that car got on the highway to Moscow.
00:43:46
Hey, Moscow police, come back here. Where at around that same time, Moscow police were answering a call,
00:43:52
ironically just a couple of blocks from where Kaylee, Maddie, Zanna, and Ethan were,
00:43:57
so close you could actually see the house on King Road. How old are you guys? This was the scene on an officer's body cam.
00:44:06
Take a knot, 21. The officers investigated an alcohol-related offense. Citation here. You put the rest of your information on here, but that's all your information.
00:44:16
And minutes after those officers left, that white Hyundai Elantra, having police say been driven on that highway from Pullman to Moscow,
00:44:23
appeared at this intersection, less than two miles from the house on King Road. At 3.29 a.m., police say, there was the first of several sightings of the white Elantra in the area of King Road.
00:44:37
Greg Cooper believes that for the man behind the wheel, the dress rehearsals were over.
00:44:43
This individual has the knife. He's capable, not just capable, but prepared. He's committed this crime numerous times in his mind.
00:44:51
At 4.04 a.m., investigators say, video showed the white Elantra make its final turn onto King Road.
00:44:59
It was the darkest dead of night. A time, said Dr. Gary Brucato, that is significant.
00:45:31
and all of that is used almost as a kind of a costume. The stage was set. Some would die.
00:45:40
Some would live, thankfully. But why? And what could possibly explain that one frightened witness in the hallway,
00:45:49
who apparently saw the killer up close, and yet said nothing? It was just after 4 a.m.,
00:46:12
a house a block off campus on a street called King Road. An intruder was about to cross a threshold.
00:46:21
He had a knife, and inside the home were six innocent students. You really get a sense of someone who went in there like it was D-Day.
00:46:31
Investigators believe the killer entered the home through a sliding glass door on the second floor
00:46:36
and quickly climbed the stairs to the third floor, to the bedrooms where Maddie and Kaylee slept.
00:46:43
I certainly believe that's where he commits his first crime is upstairs. So he knows where they are.
00:46:49
And he starts there. We don't know which one was his first victim or his target, what Dr. Brucato calls the prototype.
00:46:57
I believe strongly and always have that he had a particular victim and that that was either Kaylee Gonsalves or Madison Mogan.
00:47:12
What would make them targets? Well, they were beautiful, vivacious, the life of the party.
00:47:21
And they were quite essentially the type of woman he could never have. We don't know why Kaylee's dog was left unharmed in another bedroom.
00:47:33
All we know is that Maddie and Kaylee were stabbed to death with what police say was a large fixed blade K-bar knife.
00:47:41
I do think that the particular type of weapon that was used in this offense would suggest an individual that wanted to get up close and personal with victims.
00:47:51
You imagine a person almost kind of walking around with a box full of hate. and this is the moment at which I'm going to open it.
00:47:58
So I think that the blade was chosen as part of a fantasy. I also think a small blade like that
00:48:04
might be seen as something of a phallic substitute in an individual who felt that he was inadequate with women.
00:48:11
And then the killer's mistake. Somehow he dropped the knife sheath, exactly like this one, a sheath with a snap,
00:48:20
where investigators say they would later discover touch DNA. This is pure speculation, but I found myself imagining
00:48:27
that if it came from his hands, perhaps in that moment, this glove-wearing, obsessional, insecure
00:48:34
guy was able to take the gloves off and experience those offenses purely and fully barehanded.
00:48:42
Why leave the sheath behind? Why would that have happened? A person can zone out, kind of blip out of reality. That's the kind of person that under
00:48:52
a great deal of stress, pumping with adrenaline, you could easily see making a goof up like that
00:48:57
because of a little dissociative blip. Police believe that after killing Kaylee and Maddie,
00:49:04
the intruder went downstairs to the second floor intending to leave the house, but encountered Zanna, who was still awake.
00:49:11
She had just ordered DoorDash and was still using TikTok. We don't know enough about the crime scene
00:49:17
to suggest how that contact occurred, whether or not somebody steps outside because they heard something,
00:49:23
they step outside the bedroom, they confront him. Roommate Dylan Mortensen in her room on the second floor told police she thought she heard crying from Zanna's room.
00:49:34
And then a male voice says something like, it's okay, I'm going to help you. Does that say anything to you in terms of his M.O.?
00:49:43
He's attempting to control the victim. To ensure in the victim's mind that he's not there to hurt but to help.
00:49:54
She won't scream. She won't run away. And so he, as a result of that, gets the kind of response and reaction from her
00:50:02
that he needs to maintain the power and control of her to successfully finish the crime off.
00:50:08
After killing Zanna, police say the intruder, who may have been surprised by Ethan's presence because he was visiting overnight,
00:50:16
then stabbed Ethan to death, too, and left both bodies in a bedroom. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,
00:50:24
and that's why he killed them. And on the killer's way out, something strange. Dylan told police that as she stood in the doorway to her room,
00:50:35
a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walked toward her.
00:50:42
She said he was 5'10", male, athletically built with bushy eyebrows, and that he walked right past her
00:50:49
as she stood in what she called a frozen shock phase. Did the killer even see her?
00:50:57
He could have been kind of zoned out. I think the point is that he would have been frustrated that it didn't go precisely according to the way he envisioned it.
00:51:06
You have to imagine somebody like a movie director that has a vision and is irritated that his actors won't do things the way he envisions them.
00:51:14
So that it didn't go according to plan. It probably got a little botched. At 4.20 a.m., police say, 16 minutes after the car was last seen on security video,
00:51:25
it was caught again on camera, leaving the neighborhood at a high rate of speed.
00:51:31
I think he would have felt cleansed. I think he would have felt devoid of that rage that had been building in him
00:51:40
and finally felt a sense of sort of being clean. I mean, the idea of feeling cleansed after killing someone is just a horrible idea.
00:51:53
What would the act of killing then mean to him, these young women? Oh, revenge. Complete dominance of them not being able to say no that he was going to take their life.
00:52:10
28 minutes after the Elantra was seen leaving King Road, a phone linked to Brian Koberger was, police say, turned back on.
00:52:19
At 5.27 a.m., an hour after the murders, the car was seen on surveillance cameras back in Pullman, Washington.
00:52:27
And the man investigators believe was at the wheel? Experts believe he was on a high unlike he had ever experienced.
00:52:36
the really frightening thing is that for an offender like that the first kill is like
00:52:44
we would think about the day our first child was born or the day we got married or something like
00:52:49
that it's the day you become what you are the fantasy is played out and for the individual
00:52:57
they've become something in their own eyes and um it's horrifying to think of it that way but
00:53:04
That's how that kind of person would feel. But what would explain movements a few hours later
00:53:09
around the scene of the crime? What was going through the mind of the driver of the white Elantra?
00:53:16
And was the killer soon suggesting ways to solve the murder that he himself committed?
00:53:34
As Sunday morning dawned, students on King Road in Moscow were sleeping in, as college kids do, without any clue what had gone on overnight.
00:53:49
But investigators now believe that less than four hours after returning home to Pullman after the murders Brian Kohlberger was back in Moscow Cell phone records show that at 9 12 a Koberger phone once again for nine minutes linked to towers covering the house on King Road
00:54:09
What he was thinking or exactly why he was there we cannot know and once again Brian Koberger has
00:54:15
not been convicted of anything. That said Dr. Gary Bucato who has interviewed hundreds of violent
00:54:22
defenders, told us that a criminal will often return to the scene of his crime as a fulfillment
00:54:28
of fantasy and to bask in the ultimate forms of control and possession. Why would taking a person's
00:54:36
life be a form of possessing them? Because you would be bound together forever in history.
00:54:41
When John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln, you could never look Lincoln up again without seeing the
00:54:46
name of John Wilkes Booth. It's the ultimate form of having control over where they are all the time.
00:54:51
Oh my, that's very dark. Well, that's what you learn when you talk to offenders.
00:54:58
It was nearly three hours after Kohlberger's return to visit King Road, when the 911 call was made to police.
00:55:06
How did you find out what happened? I had received a text and a call from one of my friends,
00:55:16
and she asked me if I knew anything was happening, because there was cop cars everywhere.
00:55:22
I texted Kaylee to ask if she was okay, but she never responded back. And then a couple of hours later was when I kind of found out
00:55:36
everything that went down that day. What was that like? We were all in shock. So I guess in my head I was just like, there's no way this is real.
00:55:47
We just saw them. 90 miles from Moscow, in the town of Rastrom, Idaho, Kaylee's parents found a law officer at their door.
00:55:57
He's a sick. Yeah, I went into complete shock. Absolute complete shock. I couldn't cry, I couldn't think.
00:56:09
Christy and Steve's daughter, Kaylee, and her best friend, Maddie, were, of course, among the dead.
00:56:15
And we just thought, how can this be? especially since Kaylee had just moved out of the King Road house before graduation
00:56:25
and was due to leave soon for a trip to Europe and then take a job in Texas. But that weekend, she'd gone back one last time to Moscow to hang out with her friends.
00:56:38
I mean, I had hope that something had got fumbled or something had got mixed up,
00:56:43
but I turned the TV on and I saw the house and I was like, it's 1122 King Road. and I saw Kaylee and Maddie's car in the driveway.
00:56:52
The rest of the victim's parents were notified, Maddie's, Zanna's, Ethan's, and an indescribable grief and fear spread across the campus.
00:57:04
Did you go right home or did you stay at the school? What did you do? I think after, yeah, a couple of days,
00:57:11
I went home and I wasn't sure if I wanted to come back. In those first days after,
00:57:16
as investigators from Moscow PD, Idaho State Police, and the FBI descended on the scene.
00:57:24
Across the state line at WSU, a certain T.A. returned to class, the one who'd been grading so harshly, a T.A. named Brian Koberker,
00:57:34
who now seemed to at least one student to act differently. And Hayden Stinchfield wonders in retrospect if that change had anything to do with the murders.
00:57:44
or was it just coincidence? At a certain point, he started just giving everyone 100s
00:57:50
and he stopped leaving notes. It definitely was a before that day and after that day that you could see.
00:57:56
To the outside world, those first days of the investigation were discouraging. Police weren't saying very much.
00:58:04
Internet crime sleuths filled the void. Okay, so I keep going back about if there's one suspect
00:58:10
or if there's multiple suspects. This is my theory. Dried blood, no blood at all.
00:58:14
Unchecked and unrestrained, true crime fans second-guessed, and named innocents as possible suspects.
00:58:21
We just got another major puzzle piece. Even Brian Koberger's old college classmate back in Pennsylvania,
00:58:27
criminal justice major Josh Ferraro started doing TikToks on the case, under the name Psychological Sleuth.
00:58:35
Hey, what's going on, guys? Josh Ferraro. I just found myself getting sucked into it and really engaged with this community.
00:58:42
I did a few lives on TikToks where we had a psychologist join. I just thought that was the coolest thing.
00:58:48
Authorities did release one important piece of information. The murder weapon was, they believed, a large fixed-blade knife.
00:58:58
But commanders were constantly criticized for mixing messages, not saying enough, seeming unsure in front of the press.
00:59:07
There is a threat out there still, possibly. We don't know. We don't believe it's going to be to anybody else.
00:59:13
But what no one knew is that investigators had in hand that knife sheath left on the bed where Maddie and Kaylee were murdered.
00:59:23
The sheath where crime lab technicians found touch DNA. No one outside law enforcement knew about that sheath, except, of course, the killer.
00:59:34
What might he have been thinking once he realized that he had left the sheath behind?
00:59:39
I think it would have bothered him that there was an imperfection in the fantasy,
00:59:43
a kind of a sense of imperfection of his power and control over the situation. Perhaps that's why, after the murder, in one of the many online discussion forums that popped up for true crime fans,
00:59:54
a character appeared going by the name of Papa Roger Strangely the profile photo in hindsight of course reminded many of Brian Kohlberger
01:00:06
And on November 30th, 17 days after the murders, Papa Roger wrote to the group, Of the evidence released, the murder weapon has been consistent as a large fixed blade knife.
01:00:17
This leads me to believe they found the sheath. Remember, police hadn't talked about the sheath publicly.
01:00:25
at all. But Papa Roger had, and a couple of others too. How odd. No information that Papa Roger and
01:00:35
these people intersected in any way, but it was just interesting to me to see that other people
01:00:41
thought along that line as well. I think a lot of us have watched a lot of crime dramas, and the idea
01:00:47
that somebody would have left a sheath behind has never come up in anything I've ever read or watched
01:00:52
heard. Right. This is just one reason our source tells us that investigators are now convinced
01:00:59
that the man behind the Papa Roger profile was Brian Kohlberger. One is puzzled about this.
01:01:09
Why do something that may wind up giving you away, which apparently contributed in some way to his
01:01:16
them believing that he was the killer. You'd have an individual that had such a need for control and
01:01:22
that egotistical drive that they wouldn't be able to resist, even at the risk of their own incarceration.
01:01:28
They would be incapable of controlling the desire to reach out into the world and say,
01:01:32
ha-ha, you know. Gotcha. I did this. Gotcha. Exactly. But that gotcha part? It wouldn't be long before an altercation with his professor would cost Brian Koberter his job as a TA.
01:01:47
And when he left to head home for the holidays, he was in for a bumpy ride. I'll hold you over for tailgating.
01:01:56
Is this your car? Okay, cool. Where are you headed? It had been more than three weeks since the murders in Moscow
01:02:18
when authorities issued an alert that felt like the first big break. On the night of the murder, around 3.45 a.m.,
01:02:28
A gas station surveillance camera a mile from the crime scene had captured grainy footage of what was later determined to be a white Hyundai Elantra.
01:02:38
When you saw that little bit of video, the white car driving by, what happened? Oh, so significant. Who else is driving by at that rate of speed at that hour of the morning?
01:02:51
Police nationwide would soon be on the lookout for that car. And then, despite the dragnet, a week later,
01:03:00
no one noticed that a white Hyundai Elantra pulled out of the parking lot at the Steptoe Village Apartments on the campus of WSU in Pullman.
01:03:09
Inside, Brian Kohlberger and his father, Michael, who'd flown out to make the long drive back east with Brian for the holidays.
01:03:18
Not a soul in law enforcement was in sight when the Elantra began a rather curious route to Pennsylvania.
01:03:26
Rather than taking the more direct routes, according to Google Maps, police say,
01:03:31
the Coburgers dropped into Colorado, where a license plate reader caught the car and then headed east,
01:03:38
and thus added about 5 hours and 288 miles to their trip. It was a couple of days into that trip, on December 15th, just east of Indianapolis,
01:03:50
that one might think some nerves may have hit. Hello. How you doing? How y'all doing today?
01:03:58
Pulled you over for tailgating. Is this your car? Okay. Cool. Where are you headed?
01:04:06
Brian Koberger was pulled over, not once, but twice in less than 10 minutes for following traffic too closely.
01:04:15
I'm not going to give you guys another ticket or warning if you just got stopped.
01:04:18
Just make sure you're going to give yourself money. Okay? It's been widely reported that those stops were orchestrated by the FBI,
01:04:25
which many have claimed was most assuredly trailing the Kohlbergers during their entire trip across the country.
01:04:31
But the FBI has told us that is not true. And in fact, while police were looking for a white Elantra at this time,
01:04:38
our source tells us police had not yet connected Kohlbergers' white Elantra to the crime scene.
01:04:45
And as for those stops in Indiana, well, tonight we can tell you what really happened on that highway.
01:04:52
Our source says those officers were doing routine drug interdiction. It's work in which officers are trained to watch the behavior of drivers,
01:05:02
and behavior is very likely why Brian Koberger got pulled over. What you're looking for is erratic or unusual driving behavior.
01:05:15
Suddenly changing lanes or something like that. Changing lanes, speeding up, and then, you know, putting a vehicle in between the law enforcement vehicle and their vehicle.
01:05:25
So that, our source tells us, is why Kohlberger was stopped. And after the car was pulled over?
01:05:33
When everybody gets pulled over, they're worried that they're going to get a ticket or, you know, oh, gosh, you know, how long am I going to be here?
01:05:41
And so when they find out they're not going to get a ticket, they kind of relax and everything is OK.
01:05:46
But with people who are doing something wrong, they remain stiff. They remain intense.
01:05:54
Oh OK My view was the father acted as you would expect but Brian Koberger did not He was still very uptight
01:06:05
Brian Koberger's driving behavior got him stopped, but once stopped, well, tense,
01:06:10
his behavior was not enough to set off alarms for the officers looking for drugs
01:06:15
or to keep the Kobergers from going on their way. All right, we'll have you, sir.
01:06:19
A day after those traffic stops, Friday, December 16th, the Elantra arrived at its final destination,
01:06:29
Albright'sville, Pennsylvania, 90 miles north of Philadelphia, where police say Brian Koberger got his Elantra serviced
01:06:37
and began some odd behaviors, like wearing latex gloves even inside the family home.
01:06:44
And back in Idaho, the investigators finally caught a very big break. DNA from the knife sheath found at the crime scene had been analyzed by forensic genetic genealogists.
01:06:58
A law enforcement source told us the genealogists suggested investigators focus on a particular family tree.
01:07:05
NBC News reporter Stephanie Gosk. Our source tells us they got a list, a small enough list that they got a name.
01:07:14
A name in the immediate family of Brian Kohlberger. The cops went into hyperdrive.
01:07:23
Two days before Christmas, they used that DNA information to obtain a search warrant
01:07:28
for Brian's cell phone records and found a treasure trove. Records that revealed those repeated comings and goings of Brian Kohlberger's phone to King Road,
01:07:39
including on the night of the murders. and records showing Koberger owned a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra
01:07:47
just like the one seen in that gas station surveillance footage a mile from the crime scene around the time of the murders.
01:07:55
Together with the DNA, the police finally had their suspect. If they had not used that forensic genealogy,
01:08:03
they might never have identified him. His name gave them the cell phone number, and it wasn't until they got the cell phone number
01:08:09
that they could put the cell phone and the car in the neighborhood at the same time.
01:08:15
The noose was tightening. And you're about to hear a story that's never been reported.
01:08:22
How the fast-moving investigation had even Brian Koberger's family feeling the heat.
01:08:39
Across the Poconos in Pennsylvania, families were celebrating. It was Christmas Eve 2022, and the Kohlbergers' home in Albrightsville was no different.
01:08:54
Except, well, they were different. According to our source, investigators learned the following.
01:09:02
One of Brian's two older sisters, home for the holidays, brought up an uncomfortable topic.
01:09:08
the sister had noticed Brian had been wearing latex gloves. She thought it odd. And at some point the sister quite loudly
01:09:16
pointed out that at the time of the murders in Moscow Brian had lived just a few miles away in Pullman
01:09:22
and that Brian drove a white Elantra a car that law enforcement across the nation was looking for.
01:09:30
Add that to the gloves and the sister said she thought the Kohlberger family should consider that Brian might have killed
01:09:37
the four students in Moscow. Our source says Brian's father said no, he didn't believe that.
01:09:44
But then our source says several members of the family actually went outside to look for evidence in Brian's white Elantra, and they didn't find any.
01:09:54
But by then police had already observed Brian cleaning the car with bleach. We reached out about this to an attorney close to the family.
01:10:04
He told us the family would have no comment. As Christmas came and went, FBI agents were watching the Kohlberger home in Pennsylvania.
01:10:15
On December 27th, they pulled trash at the home and flew it across the country to the Idaho State Lab for testing.
01:10:22
They got the results the next day. The DNA that they got, they realized, was from the person who was very, very, very likely to be the father of the person who committed the crime.
01:10:37
Now, we know Brian Kloberger is with his parents. So the DNA that they pulled, they suspect, is his father, the father of the person who committed the murder.
01:10:47
Just days later, on December 30th, approximately 1.30 a.m., it all went down. Dozens of local, state, and federal agents descended on the Kohlberger home,
01:10:58
and when agents moved in, it may not surprise you to learn, Brian Kohlberger was awake.
01:11:06
He was, according to a prosecutor, standing in the kitchen, wearing latex gloves,
01:11:12
putting his personal trash into Ziploc bags to be taken, our source says, to the trash can of a neighbor.
01:11:19
What did you make of that? Well, I made of that that he was protecting his DNA. He was basically worried.
01:11:28
Brian Koberger was under arrest. The news was breaking. This morning we were being told that a person of interest was taken into custody.
01:11:36
As the day went by, everybody learned more. What I can tell you is we have an individual in custody.
01:11:42
And when Josh Ferraro first saw the suspect's mugshot. When the photo popped up, I said, I know that guy.
01:11:49
why in the world do I know this guy? Then it hit him. It was his old biology lab partner at DeSales
01:11:57
University, Brian Koberger. It was insane to me. Absolutely insane. I just checked my phone because I'm like, I know I had this guy's number.
01:12:06
I know I have his email. I have it all still in my phone. In Idaho, Kayla Nguyen was home in Boise when she got the news.
01:12:14
I was very relieved just because we knew what had happened, like who he was and like that he was arrested.
01:12:25
Just a huge feeling of relief. Police department search warrant, come to the door!
01:12:33
Hours after Kohlberger's arrest, Pullman police served a search warrant on his apartment.
01:12:38
Among the findings? On a pillow and mattress cover in Kohlberger's bedroom, police say,
01:12:44
two red stains that later tested a presumptive positive for blood. Brian! Brian, what's the doing?
01:12:51
Later that same morning, Brian Kohlberger appeared before a judge. One of his lawyers reported that Koberger said he believes he'll be exonerated.
01:13:01
Within days, he'd been flown back to Pullman, then driven to Moscow for his first Idaho court appearance.
01:13:09
Charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. The maximum penalty for this offense is death and or imprisonment for life. Do you understand?
01:13:20
Yes. Held without bail in the Latow County Jail. Kohlberger, we're told, is in what the jail considers solitary,
01:13:30
a single cell, no contact with other inmates. I keep wondering what his life must be like in a jail cell.
01:13:37
You've had enough clients to know how things go for them. Ah, it's miserable. Defense attorney Jim Seabee, who has no direct involvement in this case,
01:13:48
has visited that jail hundreds of times in his career. I've practiced 44 years, and I joke with people that I might have spent as much as between six months and a year in jail myself,
01:14:00
because I've had to prepare for trial many times down in a jail. It's so depressing for me, and I'm meeting with them in a library or a council.
01:14:09
And then you get to go home at night. Right. Again, Kohlberger has not been convicted of any crime and is presumed innocent.
01:14:17
But Dr. Gary Brucato believes, based on his decades of training, experience, and conversations with imprisoned offenders,
01:14:25
that Kohlberger is likely different from other inmates charged with violent crimes.
01:14:31
I would imagine that there's a lot of probably watching every drop of press that it's possible to watch.
01:14:38
We do know that Kohlberger is receiving a lot of mail which is rerouted a source tells us to his lawyer office And his lawyer then decides what Kohlberger sees
01:14:51
And among the items addressed to Kohlberger, it's been reported, are many letters from female admirers.
01:14:59
This season on the club during lock-up. Over the past few years, an entire genre of entertainment has sprung up around the idea of dating, inmates, convicts, ex-cons.
01:15:11
It was just so much easier in prison. None of this surprises Carrie Rawson, whose father, BTK serial killer Dennis Rader, has many female admirers, just like Brian Koberger.
01:15:25
There was a whole Reddit group that was shut down and these Koberger fans. There were women building shrines to Koberger, like with flowers and K-Bar knives and photos of him.
01:15:35
I'm sorry, I'm just having trouble with this. I can understand a lot of strange things about the way human beings behave, but that's one that I do not get.
01:15:43
I mean, K-Bar knives and flowers? What? They're like, hey, he's innocent until proven guilty, and he's like a good guy.
01:15:53
But I had dealt with that for 18 years with my father, so I've dealt with these women contacting my father.
01:15:59
As for Brian Koberger, just days ago we learned that a grand jury has indicted him on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.
01:16:10
So, what now? When might his trial be? What penalty might he face? Death penalty is fairly popular in Idaho, I understand.
01:16:21
Is it likely that this will get a hard look as a death penalty case? For months, all eyes have been on this courthouse in Moscow, Idaho.
01:16:45
Here in June, Brian Koberger was expected to make his first major court appearance,
01:16:49
a preliminary hearing with witnesses, testimony, evidence, after which a judge would decide if the case against Koberger should proceed.
01:16:59
A mini trial of sorts. And then, then it was suddenly canceled because this past Tuesday a grand jury
01:17:08
that had been meeting in secret and hearing evidence against Kohlberger issued an indictment on one count of burglary
01:17:15
and four counts of first-degree murder. Veteran Idaho defense attorney Jim Seabee.
01:17:22
Did it surprise you the prosecutor decided to go this way No I was surprised he didn do it earlier or sooner Pretty common for grand juries to be convened in Idaho on bigger cases
01:17:33
What's the standard when a grand jury is looking at a possible indictment? It's the same as a preliminary hearing. It's probable cause.
01:17:40
Is there reason to believe that a crime was committed and that this person committed it?
01:17:44
I think it was a practical move. I don't view it as a tactical move as much as just something where they can just move on with the case.
01:17:51
What's in the indictment? And what new information does it contain about the evidence against Kohlberger?
01:17:57
We don't know yet. Why hasn't the public seen this indictment yet? Well, just because I think it just follows the tradition of secrecy,
01:18:07
that when you have an indictment, it's supposed to be unsealed in a certain way.
01:18:11
I expect you'd be able to see it on Monday when the defendant makes it into court for his arraignment.
01:18:18
At that arraignment, Brian Koberger is expected to stand before a judge to enter a plea to the charges named in the indictment.
01:18:26
And then? Death penalty is fairly popular in Idaho, I understand. Is it likely that this will get a hard look as a death penalty case?
01:18:36
Oh, I'm certain it would. How long does the prosecutor have before he decides whether or not it's a death penalty case?
01:18:41
He has to give the notice within 60 days of the arraignment or entry of a plea. No word which way the prosecutor is leaning.
01:18:52
But since Kohlberger's arrest, Idaho's governor has signed a new law, giving the state the option to use a firing squad in executions
01:19:01
if it cannot find the chemicals necessary for lethal injection. Still, the trial and any sentencing phase, if it comes to that,
01:19:10
could be far down the road. How long do you think it'll be before he appears before a jury?
01:19:16
I'd be very surprised if it was less than a year. In the meantime, investigators will continue to look into Kohlberger's past
01:19:24
to see if he can be linked to other crimes. They've found some curious items. For example, in search warrants, police reported that in Kohlberger's home in Pennsylvania,
01:19:35
in Brian's bedroom, we're told, inside a latex glove, police found two ID cards.
01:19:43
IDs belonging to two women. And not, our source tells us, not the women who are among the victims on King Road.
01:19:53
Were there other targets? Yeah, other targets, other potential targets. I think just the way they were hidden.
01:19:59
and I'm going to call it hidden because your average person would not hide an ID in this fashion So I think they might have some significance even if it not to King Road No matter who they belong to the victims in this case are many One of Koberger sisters
01:20:19
we have confirmed, has been terminated from her job in the mental health field. No word on why.
01:20:26
And his parents? I really quite honestly feel for them. I can't imagine being a mother
01:20:33
and looking at my son and believing he killed four people or was capable of that.
01:20:42
Carrie Rawson, the daughter of BTK, knows some of what they're going through. They're probably just trying to grapple with what is happening now.
01:20:52
Did it take you a long time to somehow convince yourself that you weren't responsible for what happened?
01:20:57
I don't think you're ever going to ever let that go the rest of your life. And you don't get to walk away from it. It never ends.
01:21:03
You just go forward because there's really no other way. You just do it. You have to.
01:21:12
And in Moscow, moving forward met the university-conferred posthumous certificates and degrees
01:21:19
on Maddie, Kaylee, Zanna, and Ethan. This is a moment for us to acknowledge the contributions they've made
01:21:28
and celebrate their academic achievement. Soon, the house on King Road will be torn down
01:21:37
And somewhere close by on campus They'll put up a sign, a plaque, a place to gather
01:21:43
So the victims will be remembered as the years go by Their names And what happened here one terrible night on King Road
01:21:53
Sometimes, like, my photo memories will pop up on my phone I'll wake up and I'll find, like, videos of, like, Kaylee
01:22:02
and she's like dancing and singing. Zanna just like smiling. Just like random photos of them.
01:22:11
What happens inside in your heart when you see that pop up unexpectedly? I think like it hurts a little
01:22:17
because like in my heart and like in my head, they should still be here, you know.
01:22:32
That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Sunday at 7, 6 central.
01:22:38
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.
01:22:45
Good night.