Original subtitles

They had everything going for them.

The whole world was their oyster.

You send your kids to college

and expect them to come back.

He entered the home and butchered those students.

That crime scene, I can still see it in my head.

Moscow police department,

they sat me down and they said, we have a suspect.

In the middle of the night.

They kicked through the doors of a house,

and they arrested a man of 28 years old.

This could be him.

He's not someone like the rest of us.

Knowing what he had done,

his face scares you.

It scared us that there wasn't much information

coming from the authorities,

because it left just too much room

for the community and students

to kind of ruminate about what could be happening.

We all felt incredibly heartbroken and scared,

and we wanted to make some sense of

how something like this could happen.

It was inconceivable.

We were terrified that there were going to be more.

That it wasn't going to stop at the four.

We were all on edge.

It's hard, just as a human being to...

not have those thoughts of, we might not find this person,

we might not be successful.

It really gets to a point where

those of us in the community start talking and we say,

we start wondering,

is this case going to go cold?

You know, we just haven't heard,

what if this person gets away with it?

It was terrifying.

But we did our best to, in those moments

when I know, me personally, when I have thoughts like that,

doubling down on my motivation

and my drive and my focus on what I needed to do

to continue down the path and get back to the mission.

On the scene, we're following the cars,

we're following some of the victimology,

we're following on tips.

Now we also have the labs working the DNA.

There was male DNA found on the knife sheath

that was in the bed with the victims.

The DNA originally is tested against the DNA databases,

and we do not have a match in the DNA databases.

There was no match to that DNA in CODIS,

which just means that

the subject has not been tested before the murders.

At that point, we decided to transfer that DNA

to the investigative genealogy team.

The FBI were saying that there's this thing

that's been developed now.

It's called DNA genealogy.

And there are these databases all throughout the world

that you can take this DNA sample to.

They'll create what's called a genome out of it,

and be able to give you a profile of who this person is.

Potentially, you could go do this,

and it might help point you in a direction

of who this DNA belongs to.

I was put in charge of transporting the DNA sample

that we got off of the sheath to Houston, Texas,

to a company called Othram,

where they were going to submit it in for DNA genealogy

to be able to hopefully figure out who this suspect was.

But it is a process.

It does take time for us to get the answers that we need.

Also, at the same time,

we kept investigating the Hyundai Elantra.

We knew we were looking for a newer model Hyundai Elantra,

White in colour.

The FBI, they gave us about a six-year period, though,

that we could be looking at.

Anywhere from 2013, all the way up to like 2018-ish.

Fairly big span that initially we were looking at,

and we started looking at our databases,

trying to see if we could pull any of those

from those years that he gave us

for a white Hyundai Elantra to see if we had any in town.

So that we could start looking at the owners of those vehicles

and trying to see if we can make connections.

To try to see if we can narrow it down,

we had asked universities for parking permits.

We had looked at registered owners.

We had anything that popped up with local registrants,

we deep dove on them to find anything and that stuff.

We were trying to research all of those.

Moscow police,

the Idaho State Police and the FBI

all put out calls for information related to

white Hyundai Elantra's, who may have been in North Idaho

or have some association with Idahoans,

or may even be a rental,

or may, you know, nobody knows anything.

All over America,

people are looking for white Hyundai Elantra's.

I'm down here in Boise,

I'm even like writing down licence plates

on white Hyundai Elantras.

And I'm submitting information to the FBI

through some database online that they, they made accessible.

I specifically, myself, saw two Hyundai Elantras

that seemed, quote, suspicious.

And I went on to the FBI portal

and submitted tips with their licence plate numbers.

Everybody was doing that.

Thousands and thousands of tips they were getting

about white Hyundai Elantra's had to be processed somehow.

So that's more information being dumped into the FBI

and just overwhelming the system.

Everybody's looking for this car.

This car, this car.

We got 20,000 of them just in Idaho and eastern Washington.

And we don't know

that the killer's from Idaho or eastern Washington.

So what happens if you expand that up?

Our suspect pool

is still in the hundreds of thousands of people.

As we looked through all these names,

not a single person, or was related to your vehicle type,

you're just hitting another dead end at that point

as we were still waiting for

the genealogy stuff to come through.

But then we got a phone call from Othram.

They said that they were able to get a really good,

strong genome out of it.

They put it into the two databases they had access to,

and they couldn't come up with a definitive suspect,

but they found certain lineage

that potentially could lead us to a potential suspect

if we continued maybe doing more investigation,

trying to contact more people in this line

to see if they could tell us who they were related to

and try and build out this family, big family tree.

It was at that time that the FBI was like,

well, we have our own genealogy department

that has other methods that they can use.

And it was made at that point,

a decision at that point to take

what Othram had done and created up to that point,

take it to the FBI, get it to them,

and then they would continue on

with trying to dig deeper into the genealogy part of it

to see if we can't eventually get back to a suspect.

So as they start putting the information in

and they start building out a family tree,

they were able to find an individual

who had a familial resemblance.

So not the suspect,

but somehow tied to or related to

this DNA that we found on the sheath.

And then they were able to build it down from there

and get closer and closer and closer

to somebody who they thought maybe the suspect could be,

because they can't 100% definitively say

this is the suspect

or this is the person who did this crime

because it's the same DNA.

So as they build that family tree,

they start looking at different traits.

They knew, based off of how they break down these DNA genomes

and how they build them out,

that this individual had

a very high percentage of Italian heritage in them.

It was above 80% of their lineage came from Italy.

They were like, okay, we found one individual

who the mom and the dad, both we felt,

had a high enough Italian heritage

that most likely their child would be the actual person

whose DNA this belongs to.

And that couple, they found that husband and wife

only had one son.

When it was December 20th, we were all sitting together

where we had the meeting with

what they refer to as the IG unit in the FBI.

We were having a call to see where they were at with it.

And it was at that point he's like, so I have a name for you.

We got the name of Bryan Kohberger

as a potential person of interest.

We all just, who is that?

This could be him.

Now we have a name.

Now you can start to really investigate the person.

[tense

music]

This could be him.

Again, we still couldn't say for sure if it was,

but we have a name.

We have somebody that we can start looking at.

Bryan Kohberger.

He's 28 years old.

He's from Pennsylvania.

A Washington State University graduate student

studying criminology.

So he was right across the state line,

just seven miles away at WSU.

As we dug deeper into his vehicle,

that individual owned a white Hyundai Elantra

within the six-year time period we were looking for.

I received a text from Moscow Police Chief James Fry

asking me if I could meet with him

at the Moscow Police Department.

At the time, I just thought I was going to be

another law enforcement briefing.

And so I showed up at Moscow PD

and we walked into a room

and it was full of all of the investigative team.

I think there were 30 or more people in that room,

and I was the only other law enforcement person.

So it was not just another law enforcement briefing

I knew, now there's some kind of connection to Pullman.

And they said, we have a suspect,

and the suspect is a graduate student

at Washington State University

living in graduate student housing.

And his name is Bryan Kohberger.

And when they told me the name,

it rang a bell, but I didn't immediately

remember why it rang a bell.

And it took me about 30s or so,

and I said, "I've talked to Bryan Kohberger before."

I interviewed him for a research assistant position

at Pullman Police Department in April.

I have his resume.

I have his cover letter.

Their ears definitely perked up.

Prior to being chief of WSU, he was chief of Pullman PD.

And he remembered getting a essay from Bryan Kohberger,

applying to be an intern at the police department.

He vividly remembered the essay

talking about how small police departments

don't have the training, the skills,

and that's what Bryan wanted to bring to the agency.

When I interviewed Bryan Kohberger in April,

he was just an applicant.

He was kind of an odd guy.

Not enough really, to be a what I would call a red flag to say,

wow, this guy is going to go out and do something horrible.

But just that, you know, this guy is just odd.

His personality is a little bit off.

Probably can't relate well to people.

He's a loner.

He didn't have a lot of friends.

He didn't have a girlfriend.

He didn't fit in.

It was a great decision to select who I selected

because she did so good,

but also not selecting Bryan Kohberger.

I knew he'd be a PhD student

coming to Washington State University,

but probably wouldn't have any interaction with him ever again,

and it was in the past.

Now his name comes up again,

not only comes up again,

but comes up as a quadruple homicide suspect.

And he was in the criminology program.

He was studying crime,

so there's an irony there.

It was quite a, quite a moment.

It was surreal.

I mean, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

They asked me not to say a word to anyone,

and so I didn't.

They obviously were very concerned about

information leaking,

and not necessarily that it was going to be intentional,

but it could be an inadvertent leak that could

jeopardise an investigation of crime of this magnitude.

They already knew that he lived at Steptoe Village Apartments

on campus.

And then I found out that he did have a student office

on campus, as many PhD students do.

We found his apartment over at, at WSU.

His apartment is raided.

There's no DNA from any of the victims.

The only way for that to have happened

is if Kohberger had meticulously thought out his getaway.

He wasn't there.

His vehicle wasn't there,

so he didn't know where he was at that point in time.

We started trying to locate him.

Where is he at?

We speak to local police.

At that point we find out before the murders,

a Washington state officer pulled him over

on Washington State University campus

for pulling into an intersection on a red light.

That body cam footage happens before the murders.

There was a killer among us,

somewhere, killer on the loose.

It was terrifying.

We needed to make the arrest on Bryan Kohberger.

But the investigative genealogy is not legally probable cause

you have to get a direct DNA match

to the DNA found by court accepted processes.

So we have a name,

which is, basically we have to treat as a lead.

It can't, it can't be used as evidentiary purposes.

So we have to get a DNA sample

to confirm and get a positive match to the DNA

on the knife sheath from that individual.

And so we had to locate Bryan Kohberger.

As we run him through the databases,

we see that prior to us receiving his name,

within days that he had travelled back east

from Washington State University.

We were able to learn that he was stopped

travelling from Washington State University

back to Pennsylvania, where he lived.

When Kohberger decided to drive,

uh, to drive home to Pennsylvania for the break,

his father flew out from Pennsylvania and,

uh, met him out here and drove back with him.

While driving through Indiana,

he was pulled over for following too close

to the vehicle in front of him.

Brian looked pretty suspicious

during those police stops.

His eyes were really wide

and he was trying not to make eye contact.

It kind of seemed like he was trying

to hide his face a little bit.

Is there a parent out there who could ever believe

that their child could do something like this?

The nice part about working with

the Federal Bureau of Investigation is

they have agents all over the United States.

So we were able to use them

and the local Pennsylvania State Police

to be able to go to his parent's house,

where we were able to then positively put his vehicle at

and show that he was now at home.

When they got his car from Pennsylvania.

It had been completely, meticulously detailed,

to the point where they describe it as

having almost been taken apart inside.

Very clearly scrubbed hard

to get rid of DNA.

The next steps after that

was trying to see if we can get a DNA sample

from somebody in that residence.

That would either be a positive match or a really close match

to the DNA off of the sheath again.

The agents and state police were able to pull

what's called a trash pull.

When you take your garbage and you put it on your kerb,

you are now abandoning that property.

So it becomes a point where we as law enforcement

can actually go grab your garbage.

We don't need a search warrant for it.

We can go get your garbage and go take it and process it.

So that's what we did.

We did a trash pull.

We went and grabbed the garbage off of

in front of their house,

took it back to

one of the police departments there in Pennsylvania

where they went through it.

We had our investigators on the phone

FaceTiming with these investigators over there,

looking at the evidence to try and pick out

what is it that we want to try and test

that we feel will have the best opportunity

to provide us with a DNA sample.

So they went and picked a bunch of different items.

Those items were brought to us back here in Idaho

and handed them off to the Idaho State Lab.

One of those items was a Q-Tip that had wax on.

It provided us with a male DNA sample

that 100% had to be the father of our suspect.

And we knew at that point in time that

Brian was at the house.

It was his dad's house.

So we knew that Brian was the individual

who killed these four students.

In the middle of the night,

they kicked through the doors of a house in Pennsylvania

all the way across the country,

almost 3000 miles away from Moscow,

and they arrested Bryan Kohberger.

It's December 30th, eight in the morning,

phone goes off, miss a call.

It's my supervisor, oh, call her back.

Going off, going off, going off, I answer.

"They're having a press conference.

What do you think it means?"

They have someone.

I get to City Hall, I walk in, the police officers are there,

they're all dressed to the nines.

They're beaming, smiling.

Never seen them happier.

I'm like, this is really something.

And they announce we have arrested Bryan Kohberger

It was just this complete rush of relief

and excitement of,

okay, we have him in custody.

We have our suspect.

This is a huge sigh of relief for the community

because even though this person isn't convicted yet,

this is progress after a time in silence,

after such a long time in fear.

That night, I'm in town,

I stay in town.

I'm like, maybe I should just go out to the bar,

see how people are feeling.

I walk into the Corner Club.

It may as well have already been New Year's Eve.

Everybody in Moscow is connected to this.

They know someone who knows someone who knows someone.

You want to have someone who can answer for it,

but then you're also,

It's shocking to, to have that name

to know, wow, this real person who lived,

you know, only a couple miles away

did this violent, just horrible murder.

After knowing what he had done,

his face scares you.

His eyes really freaked me out.

They're very wide.

Every image and video that I've seen of him, he's just stoned.

He is going to be extradited back to Idaho

and face charges for these crimes.

And I mean, they put a helmet on his ass.

When they got him out of that plane,

they put a helmet on him

because they knew that there's plenty of good old boys here

that were ready to take care of that.

I mean, you're landing in Idaho.

Big trouble.

They're bringing them to us so we can interview him.

That...

wave of relief just washed over me.

It's like we have him.

He could no longer hurt anyone.

The excitement was just overwhelming for me.

They initially started to just have a conversation,

as we typically do with potential suspects,

to, to kind of get a baseline

as to the way that they speak, and some of their mannerisms.

And initially,

the suspect was more or less willing to talk about things

like his schooling

and how he had ended up back in Pennsylvania

and how he was a WSU student, things like that.

Kohberger asked our investigators multiple times,

what is this all about?

Why are we here? What are we talking about?

And when our investigators more or less said,

we're here to talk to you about an incident

that occurred in Moscow.

That was the point at which he invoked his right to counsel

and refused to speak any further with the investigators.

He didn't want to cooperate in our investigation.

He never provided us with any answers.

We couldn't get a confession from him

that he committed this crime outright.

So just that reassurance, more reassurance to us

that we do have the right person.

After that is when we really try to understand

everything we could about him,

who he was, what his history was.

Part of that is trying to figure out why

anyone would want to do this.

We learned that he was known to be a bit socially awkward.

He seemed to put pressure on people

by staring at them.

He invaded their space.

He cut off rooms so that you couldn't exit.

If he wanted to know something from you,

he would approach and sort of hover.

He was not very good

in talking with members of the opposite sex.

His program allowed him to be a teaching assistant,

which essentially in PhD programs

means you are a teacher.

He was teaching coursework

in criminology and criminal justice,

and his students were often creeped out by him,

especially the women.

He wasn't very successful

in establishing relationships.

There were many people that came forward to say that he was

just a strange individual, very off-putting,

who thought very, very highly of themselves,

more or less narcissistic

and would be very demeaning to others

based off of his level of education versus theirs.

He had a lot of interest in

people who had committed heinous crimes,

serial killers and the like.

He wrote a paper on behaviours

after sending surveys out to a bunch of people who had,

who had killed people and asking them questions.

Is there something you would have done different?

How did you feel at the moment you killed this person?

Questions like that.

I get your studying these individuals

and you're trying to research them,

whether as a psychologist or criminologist,

or you're trying to figure out

why would somebody commit these crimes.

But it's just odd,

at least to me It was odd of

some of his questionings of the way he was going about it.

His master's degree in Pennsylvania

was under the tutelage of an expert in serial killers.

He travels all the way to Washington State to get his PhD

in criminology and criminal justice,

and he's studying serial killers,

and the murders happen in Moscow.

We also were able to learn

that he had bought the same Ka-bar knife,

and knife sheath off Amazon,

just a couple of months before he moved

out here to Pullman, Washington.

According to co-workers, digital footprints

and his cell phone pings,

he had been in or around the area of the King Road house

23 times before the killings on King Road.

All of those times that he visited

were very late in the evening

or early morning, sometime between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m...

At the time of the murders, his phone had been turned off.

Never had been in the area that night.

That thwarts us.

We now know, based primarily on digital forensics.

that Bryan Kohberger left his apartment shortly after 2:30 AM

and he drove from Pullman, Washington to Moscow,

and security cameras track that.

His cell phone data tracks with that.

He turns off his phone shortly before 3 a.m.,

and he starts to prowl the area around 1122 King Road.

We know,

because we can follow that all the way from security cameras.

People complain about a surveillance state

that we're living in in America and overseas.

People complain all the time about surveillance states.

In this instance, thank God for the surveillance state,

because surveillance state issues

are what caught Bryan Kohberger, essentially.

They can track all that data.

He took off from his apartment.

He came to Moscow,

he circled the house multiple times.

And after 4 a.m., he parked that car

somewhere in the vicinity of that house.

It's off camera, that's where he parked,

and entered that house through the second floor,

sliding glass door

Dressed all in black

with a balaclava pulled down.

He went upstairs to Kaylee and Maddie's room

and butchered those girls.

We don't know how long that took.

But in short order, he came downstairs,

encountered Xana Kernodle,

had a struggle with her in which she was also butchered,

and after which

he went into the room and murdered a sleeping Ethan.

He then exited past Dylan Mortensen

on his way out.

According to Dylan, made eye contact, saw her,

but did nothing about that.

We don't know why.

But he exited through the sliding glass door

he had come in.

Went back to his vehicle and we see the vehicle speeding off

around 4:20.

Seen leaving the King Road house

at such a high rate of speed,

he almost loses control of the vehicle.

He took a circular route back to Pullman,

avoiding town and cameras.

He went through the sort of desolate countryside

south and then up back to Pullman.

His phone is then back on.

We know he's back at the apartment

based on cell phone pinging.

And shortly after returning, 5 or 6 a.m.,

he takes a selfie.

Police find that selfie on his phone

and he's giving a thumbs up to the camera.

He's standing in his bathroom in front of the shower,

and he looks freshly scrubbed.

His skin is pink.

Most of us only understand the behaviours of serial killers

or mass killers,

or would be serial killers

based on what we see on television.

But what we see on television

is usually written by experts on serial killers

and what we see in Bryan Kohberger

very eerily matches that.

his skin in that selfie is very clearly scrubbed hard,

to get rid of DNA or other kinds of evidence.

And he's looking at the camera and he's giving a thumbs up

in what is possibly one of the creepiest things you'll see

in retrospect,

knowing now what he had just committed.

We found the person who did this,

and we have him in custody.

Our job is, I wouldn't say over,

but it's more towards the end of the culmination

of our portion of it.

So when it transitions into the trial,

that is us just working as best we can

with the prosecuting office

to prepare for their portion of the trial

and the case to take it before a jury.

They worked absolutely tirelessly and were very, very

well prepared and ready to take this case to trial.

They charged him with four counts of first degree murder

and one felony burglary charge for breaking into the house

In Idaho we have the death penalty.

Idaho is so serious about the death penalty

then, rather than these intravenous drugs

that are very difficult to come by,

Idaho recently decided to go back to firing squad.

Very easy to find a gun in Idaho, so...

Kohberger was facing the death penalty.

I worked on this case from April through August of '25.

Bill Thompson,

the elected prosecutor prosecuting this case,

gave me a call and asked if I would join him

in prosecuting the case.

Kohberger maintained his innocence,

was in jail awaiting trial.

We have trial set for August.

Lots of pre-trial motions and arguments

and evidentiary issues to work through still.

Um, what I did is I went to Moscow

and just sat in a conference room

and digested the case materials as best I could,

which was hard to do, given what that evidence is

in terms of what I had to see.

But of course, that's what I signed up for

and I was motivated more and more every hour of every day

to get this case tried and get the right result.

So we have all this evidence, we have the CCTV footage,

we have forensic DNA that places him at the scene.

All this evidence starts adding up to trial.

His defence team is delay, delay, delay.

They tried to delay the court case as long as they could.

Bryan Kohberger and his lawyer

were submitting appeals to the court

and trying to prevent this case from going to trial.

He was this criminology student trying to play the system.

He kind of thought he was like a Ted Bundy of sorts,

who, you know, he had the knowledge or thought he did,

and he thought that he would get away with this.

He was appealing to have his case dismissed.

He thought he could get away with it.

They also tried to move it from Moscow.

They said, we have to move it somewhere else.

Everybody in town knows everybody.

We're not going to get a fair trial here.

So they do.

They move it all the way to Boise.

Kohberger maintains his innocence.

I'm innocent. I didn't do it.

He was facing a very real possibility

that if he was found guilty that he was going to be killed.

Then it leaks that Kohberger is taking a plea deal.

The defence approached us at the beginning of July

and asked if there was any way for the case to be resolved,

short of the death penalty.

The only outcome is Kohberger pleading guilty to

all four first degree murders,

as well as the burglary,

and agreeing to waive his appeal rights

so that the case would essentially end at sentencing.

That was the only potential option that was ever considered.

Ultimately, it was offered and accepted.

What's best about it is that

he's not dragging anyone into court.

He's not claiming innocence.

He's not doing anything to disparage the victim's memory

or retraumatize these families.

His role is over.

I was in the courtroom at that time.

The emotion that I could feel in the room was very strong.

You could feel the tension that was there waiting for him

to finally say, yes, I did it.

I did take the life of Ethan

and Xana and Kaylee and Maddie.

To be in there and see the families weeping.

Being in the same room as the person

admitting to killing their children.

Horrific.

It was a bit surreal to see this...

I guess, human being that really didn't have any human qualities

that took away the lives of four innocent people.

I don't consider him to be a human like the rest of us.

He said he did it.

And that's all any of us know.

We don't know where the murder weapon is.

We don't know why he did it.

We don't know if he even knew these people.

We know nothing about his motivation.

We know nothing, and we never will.

Having dealt with these types of individuals,

they get this urge,

they find a target or something that triggers something,

and they feel that build up until they act on it.

It could have been as simple as

he passed one of them on the street,

and that triggered something in him,

and he followed them home.

Through cell analysis, we've shown that he was in the area

of that house numerous times,

starting as early as July of '22.

Did he set his schooling and his life and everything up

criminology to fill this need to learn the best how to do it?

Or the opposite side did his schooling and all this stuff

lead him to a curiosity of doing it?

He changes his plea to guilty.

Then two weeks later, he's actually sentenced.

He's actually sentenced to four consecutive life sentences

without the possibility of parole.

In time you will be forgotten to the wind.

No visitors,

nothing more than initials on an unmarked tombstone.

I'll leave in closing one last thing.

You picked the wrong family.

were not yours to take.

They were not yours to study, to stop or to silence.

I will call you what you are.

Sociopath.

Psychopath.

Murderer.

Or are you exactly what you always feared?

Nothing.

He's now in Idaho Maximum Security Institution.

We call it MSI.

But he's in a supermax prison, tiny little cell,

and he's barely more than 30 years old.

He's gonna spend how long in there?

60 years in a box thinking about what he's done.

Who cares?

Bryan Kohberger is nothing but a heartless killer.

And I wish he could have gotten the death sentence.

Um, this is the next best thing,

is having him in prison for the rest of his life.

This is the best way that we can help

is to make sure that people get held accountable

for their actions.

I know that doesn't, doesn't fix it.

It doesn't heal the wounds.

It never will.

It's the best we can do.

One of the biggest things about

both Kaylee and Madison

is that they were like sisters.

And I mean, you see these pictures of them

when they were so young

together and just always together

throughout every stage of life.

Xana and Ethan had found the perfect match in each other,

the perfect couple.

And they were so in love.

It's just unbelievable to think that this had happened.

The last post Kaylee had made before the murders

was a photo of all of them that became super famous.

How lucky she was to be living with those, those people,

that group of people.

I only do that when I'm talking about my family,

when I say how lucky I am to have a family.

But to them, posting those things,

it was about their friend group

that, that tight-knit knot that was in that house at 1122.

They've demolished the King Road house.

The owner of the house gave it to the university.

The university decided, we are tearing it down.

We're just going to demolish it.

We're going to get rid of it.

It really helped with the closure of this case.

Moscow will always be changed because of this.

I think ultimately,

the spirit of the university

and the fact that it is a college town,

it will bounce back.

But I think there will always be kind of a heaviness

surrounding the place, unfortunately.

We've really tried to heal

and move on the best we can,

while trying to honour and respect

the memory of these victims.

It's important to remember the victims for who they were

and their dreams, not just the way they died.

We're never going to forget those four students.