According to mainstream media, the crime of the century may be the remake of the iconic Disney movie “Snow White.” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the first movie I ever saw, and based on reviews, I have no desire to see the terribly woke, terribly wrong new version of the Grimm fairy tale, also terribly failing at the box office.
But a crime not so extensively covered captured my attention since its occurrence in November of 2022. Loosely labelled “Idaho4” -- one word -- the quadruple murders of college students at Idaho State University in Moscow, Idaho continues to show an upswing of twists and turns on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.
I’m no true crime aficionado, but I’m hooked by this one, embarrassed to admit I keep my phone open to catch any new development on it.
I must rely on the internet, because thus far mainstream media keeps focusing on the basic crime details just as reported in 2022-23, the only new stuff being dribbles of data about the accused perpetrator’s college homework and his Amazon orders.
Meanwhile, despite a seemingly cut-and-dried, presumptive ending to this heinous atrocity of a case (when did we ever hear of a quadruple murder?) legal paper has been bursting out of the defense team, expanding the story with weird and juicy sub-plots and sub-characters.
YouTube creators are all about it and no one appears impartial; major creators are adamantly “guilters” or “non-guilters” about the single indicted suspect, Bryan Kohberger.
Kohberger, now age 30, a former PhD candidate in Criminal Justice Studies at Washington State University just a few miles away from the Idaho college town, was charged by Idaho police six weeks after the murders. He has been in custody ever since, awaiting a trial scheduled for August.
In a Probable Cause Affidavit, the State asserts that on Nov. 13, 2022 Bryan Kohberger entered an off-campus student house around 4 a.m., stabbed Kaylee Goncalves and Maddie Mogan on the third floor, then went downstairs to stab Xana Kernodle and boyfriend Ethan Chapin before leaving the house through a back door at 4:25 a.m.
Two other housemates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, were alleged to be in the house, and have been dubbed “survivors” by media. Dylan stated in an interview with police that she: didn’t hear the murder incident itself, thought she heard Kaylee playing with her dog, heard an upstairs roommate say, “Someone’s here,” heard a male voice say, “It’s all right, I’m going to help you,” and saw a masked man with bushy eyebrows leaving the house at about 4am. Then, surrounded by friends called to the house, she dialed 911 almost eight hours later.
In a nutshell version, Idaho police soon stated the public had nothing to worry about because the crime was targeted --“trust us,” they said. On Dec. 23, 2022, they officially charged and arrested Bryan Kohberger at his parent’s home in Pennsylvania, where he had returned for the holidays.
Legacy news since the arrest has generally presented the case as solved; network documentaries and Howard Blum’s non-fiction/novel hybrid “When the Night Comes Falling” don’t depict a mystery. True crime mavens Nancy Grace and Ashley Banfield aren’t shy about proclaiming Kohberger guilty as charged, opining at length on his motives as well as the evidence against him.
When I first heard about the basis of the PCA, I admit I thought they probably had their man. Primarily cited are 1) Kohberger’s DNA was found on the murder weapon knife sheath and 2) Kohberger’s car, a white Hyundai Elantra, was seen in the neighborhood. Those two details seem to “wrap it up” in all the press summaries. Oddly enough, looking into the wording of actual court documents, these items are not just controversial, they’re not confirmed. Which made me go back to my original question about these murders.
A key problem for me has always been, how could one person enter a three-storied house that he had never been inside of, kill two people on one floor and two people on another with a knife (a knife not yet found, just the sheath), leave the house and go back to his life as a college teacher’s assistant?
Experts familiar with special forces operations have suggested it would take at least 12 people to enact the murders as described, counting time preparations, lookouts and cleanup. Purportedly, it took at least six trained military to kill Osama Bin Laden, just judging by how many books have been written saying “I killed Bin Laden.”
But I’m not a sleuth, even an armchair one. As a non-serious observer of the case, for some reason I’m intrigued by all the first names, probably because Idaho4 seems to be such a generational saga.
For people who follow Idaho4 even casually, victims, survivors and witnesses all become household names. While one of the female victims has a name we’ve probably never heard before, Bethany and Dylan are girls we know. And a plethora of males loosely involved sport trendy first names.
We have two Jacks--one the ex-boyfriend of victim Kaylee, at least two Hunters--one of them talks on the eventual 911 call. Another Hunter, a fraternity brother of house victim Ethan, had been found dead a year earlier in a shallow creek behind the frat house. A chef named Inan was a next-door neighbor to the murder house. Additional Hunters and Ethans and, of course, a Trevor, were later interviewed on camera around the campuses in Idaho and Washington. (I’m not even including the Bryan.)
I don’t mean to be flippant about these horrible incidents, but to follow this thing is to get that way.
Not to be forgotten is a tangential persona named Brent Kopacka, a decorated Afghanistan Army vet who was killed in a SWAT incident in Pullman, Washington a few days before Bryan Kohberger was charged in December of 2022. Though his apartment was blocks away from Kohberger’s, his connection to the case is murky.
But if names are important, badge camera footage in a police visit prior to the SWAT shows him plainly spelling his name as K-O-P-A-C-K with definitely no “A.”. Then, in a pre-trial hearing to the Kohberger case, the presiding judge said “Kopack—uh, Kohberger.” Go figure.
By this publication a pre-trial hearing on April 9 will have taken place. In YouTube, when you type in “Idaho4” the guilters --ABC, CBS, Court TV-- won’t be hard to find. For newbies interested in a non-guilter side of the fence, I recommend starting with “Unfiltered Lucky” and “J. Embree” for simple and straightforward talk.
Marilyn Stokes was a public school teacher in Fort Worth for 15 years and subsequently worked at KERA public television for four years. She retired after 15 years at Ford Motor Company, Southwest Region where she was zone manager for small dealers in the southern half of Texas.