Transcript of The After Show: Idaho Justice

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A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, coming September 16th. Hi there, everybody, and welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts, and today we are talking about a case that so many people have been talking about for a few years, actually. It is that horrific story out in Idaho. Four college students murdered in their off-campus home during the early morning hours. We've been following the headlines over the course of the summer, and really since this story began, Brian Kauberger, as many of you know, was sentenced to life in prison. We're going to talk more about that later, pleading guilty to all charges in this case. It was a story that was featured on 2020's episode called Idaho Justice. Which you definitely want to watch if you haven't seen it already, and it's streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. Abc news correspondent, Kaina Whitworth, has been following this story from really the very beginning, as well as the podcast, King Road Killings. She has been reporting and meeting people all connected to this story. And, Kaina, this is the first time you've come on the podcast with me, I think. Welcome.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Yeah, good to have you. Well, this is a story, I mean, wow. I probably stretched you in all kinds of ways as a correspondent doing this because the tragedy and also just the glare of the story for so long, a well-known shocking four young lives cut short. All these young people stabbed to death. And you were covering the story. We know there's a resolution in the case now. We're going to get to that. But give me a sense of these young students and what it was like for you covering this story.

Yeah. I mean, you really start to learn a lot about these families, about these kids, and frankly, about yourself in the process when you cover a story this closely for this many years. These students have become a part of my life, too. I planted yellow and white tulips in my garden in honor of Ethan Chapin. Whenever I see pink, I think of Madison Mogan. If there's a big boastful laugh in the room. I think of Kaylee Gonsalves. And man, anybody that can DJ, I think of Xana Cernotal.

You really got to know their personalities, didn't you?

Absolutely. And it stood out to me early on when Kaylee's sister said, They are all so much more than their last day. It's really important to remember how these kids lived their lives. And so throughout our coverage at ABC, we have really tried to make sure that the audience gets to know them for those reasons, and that their names are the ones that ring true, and that Brian Kauberger's name is the one that slips away.

Yeah, in the background. Well, you've done such a great job of that. And then now, of Of course, you brought fresh reporting with visits with these family members and just really an opportunity for us to know these victims. You also were the very first person to talk to the Moscow Police Chief, among other folks in this case. Tell me a little bit about what that was like.

Yeah, it takes a lot to build a relationship with people, especially in a town like Moscow. This is a small town in Northern Idaho. People live there because they want a quiet lifestyle. They appreciate being secluded. So when the media pounced on Moscow, Idaho, it was a bit jarring. And over these years, I've been able to build relationships. And the police chief at the time of the murders, James Fry, I was the first to be able to speak with him during the investigation and the first to speak with him after the sentencing as well. It's taken an incredibly emotional toll on him. What I think you'll find in this 2020 episode, though, is also brand new interviews with investigators that led this investigation. These are the ones with the boots on the ground, digging through the files, doing the interviews, doing that hard work. And they speak with us. And so we heard from the FBI lead investigator, the Idaho State Police lead investigator. And the details that they reveal are really stunning about this investigation and about how they were able to find Brian Kauberger when there were thousands upon thousands of tips pouring in during this nearly seven-week manhunt when the entire community was afraid that perhaps this person would never get caught.

Boy, those investigators tell you now the work that they were doing to make sure this community would find justice. We also hear from the friends of these victims. These are the friends who were called that morning, the friends who were called before that 911 call was placed. They were the first to arrive. It's stunning because you hear from them the panic that they were dealing with while also having this idea that things don't happen. Nothing bad happens here.

This is the same-In that little small town. Exactly.

We spoke with Hunter Johnson and Emily Allant, and Hunter Johnson was best friends with Ethan Chapin, and he tells this story about hearing this call from Dylan Mortensen, one of the surviving roommates, to his girlfriend, Emily Allant, saying like, Hey, can you come over? And he's like, There was something in voice that made me just feel like I got to go. And he said, I threw on my slides and went. And then you see the response video from Moscow police, the first officer on scene, and you see Hunter Johnson in his sweatshirt, his his shorts and his slides. It all just really comes together.

In fact, a few weeks ago, the body camera footage of police talking to Dylan Mortensen, you just referenced that, was released. It's always so interesting when we see this footage, when we're digging into these cases. What were the big takeaways from that as far as you were concerned?

Absolutely. So when Officer Noones arrives on scene, he's the first one. And when you're watching this episode, I would encourage everyone to keep in mind the fact that Officer Noones is about the same age as some of these kids. And so he arrives on scene. And because it's a small town, they also know these kids, right? They've been to this house for noise complaints in the past. There's relationships there. And in a very calm manner, he starts this investigation. I think what was the most clear to me from his body worn video was the amount of confusion. That was playing out. You see these students gathered around the home, and he goes through the house, and he very quickly finds Xana Cernotal and Ethan Chapin, and the tenor changes immediately. He goes back outside and he starts talking with Dylan Mortensen. He has to eventually go upstairs to find Kaylee Gonzalez and Madison Mogan. I think it stands out because you realize Nobody standing there in the parking lot was aware that Kaylee and Maddie were upstairs at that time. It was like, We don't know where they are. We're not sure. It's about noon.

No one really was aware that they were there. And there's this startling confusion, and you hear Dylan right in that moment tell the story of seeing someone in the house.

And we've got a clip of that right now.

All right, describe the guy that you saw.

I don't think he was a little bit taller than me.

I couldn't really see much of him, but I'm almost positive. He was wearing this full-black outfit, and he had this mask that was just over his forehead and over his mouth, and he didn't say anything to me at all.

I just shut the door and locked it because I didn't know what to do.

And what struck me was when she said, I went downstairs to Bethany's room and We went back to bed telling ourselves nothing ever happens in Moscow.

The idea that they're survivors. I mean, that these roommates were slain, and then there are folks who are left behind. I mean, this story just was unfolding in the most horrific way imaginable. And you, of course, were following it. And we talked in the very beginning about there being a guilty plea now. So more information has been released. And of course, we were able to include a lot of that in our 2020 episode. We're going to come back. Kaina is going to tell us a little bit more about the details of this case and also more on where Brian Kauberger is now. So stay with us.

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We're back with Kaina Whitworth, who has covered the Idaho College murders since this story first broke nearly three years ago. She was on the ground in Idaho the very day that this all happened. And, Kaina, in your reporting, of course, in the very beginning, we didn't know what it... I mean, everybody was trying to wrap their minds around the fact that these college students were killed in this little town. But eventually, of course, we come to know more about Brian Kauberger, who was initially a person of interest and, of course, was eventually charged in this case, and he lived just about seven miles or so from the crime scene. After he was arrested, we started to learn a little bit more about him. He was a teacher's assistant at Washington State University. He was getting his PhD in criminal technology of all things. And you talk to people who knew him in the piece, which was just fascinating, the faculty and the students who some of them got to chill just knowing him. Talk about him a little bit and what you were able to learn and what surprise as to you.

Yeah. We spoke with a police chief who was the police chief in Polman, and he's the police chief at Washington State. And he was able to share a lot with us because he had initially interviewed Brian Kauberger because Brian Kauberger wanted to be an intern in the Polman Police Department. He wanted to conduct research in rural areas. And it was a Zoom interview that they did, and he said that he knew, even over that, that something was a little bit off, that he would not be able to with his team, which he felt like was really important. So he was not chosen to intern there, went by the wayside. Brian Kauberger then arrives at Washington State. In the filings that we're getting now, after the sentencing. There's just story after story, and they all have a similar tenor and tone that Brian Kauberger was a bit awkward, he was a bit standoffish, he had a deep gaze. He made people generally- That he came across as the smartest guy in the room? Absolutely. And he wanted people to know that, that that was often the only time that he was really speaking or engaging was when he wanted to showcase his intelligence.

And generally, there's this off-putting feeling about him from cohorts, from professors. And there was these stories about him blocking the exit for some female cohorts and students. He would stand between them and the door, making it just awkward for them to leave. He was known as an incredibly hard grader, and that was something that he dangled out there for his dad when he started having trouble at the university, he told his dad, Well, it's because I'm a really tough grader. He leaned into that. What really came full circle when we talked to Chief Jenkins at Washington State again was when Then Chief James Fry pulled him into the room and said, Hey, we think we have a name. It's Brian Kauberger. Well, Chief Jenkins said the hair on the back of his neck just stood up because he said, I know that name.

I interviewed him.

Here's his resume. Here's the information that I have.

And what you revealed, too, is that some of his colleagues thought that he would wind up in some an issue, maybe not something as extreme as this, but they thought he would wind up in some an issue. Kaina, while he was getting his PhD way across the country, he actually grew up in the Pocano Mountains of Pennsylvania. What did you learn about him and his upbringing and what a life he had in Pennsylvania? Because he was captured on the way back home.

What we're told is that he lived a pretty average life and childhood in the Pocanos. His dad is a mechanic. His mom works with the school district. He was the youngest of three. He had these two older sisters, and that his life was relatively normal. He struggled with some weight gain at one point, and he struggled with drugs, according to reports, at another point. And he then had this huge turnaround, where all of a sudden, he lost all this weight. He was leaning heavily into boxing, things like that, and his education. But he was at home all this time. Even when he was at DeSales getting his master's, he He was still communing. He was still living at home. And so he wasn't having that deep interaction with people until he moved all the way across the country to Washington State. It was the first time he was ever really away from his family. And I think some of the most fascinating things that we're learning is about his habits through his cell phone. When they analyzed his cell phone, they found that he had very few contacts in his phone. He interacted with very few people, and this really stood out to Analyst, was that he kept his parents' names in his phone as mother and father.

Isn't that interesting? And that's how he would refer to them in text. He would say things like, Father, why isn't mother answering? That's how he would talk about his parents with whom he had nearly constant interaction with his parents every single day.

Everybody was so fascinated this guy when he would come into the courtroom, and for so long, we would see him come in and out when there were hearings and so forth related to the upcoming trial. And he almost seemed to be enjoying that limelight.

He seemed very comfortable, certainly, in the courtroom. There was a lot of attention paid to how he acted in the courtroom by everyone, by everyone watching. And I think that he was certainly aware of that. His legal team, certainly aware of that. And it's It's fascinating, though, because you think about him being broadcast all over the nation, frankly, all over the world. Then when they dive in, they found countless selfie photos, pictures he had taken of himself, but then he never did anything with him. He never posted him. He never shared him. It was like he had taken these pictures, what, for himself?

Yeah. Well, there were a lot of things that were revealed, really disturbing discoveries from investigators creators in this case. When we come back, we're going to talk more about not only that, but also, Kaina, about the victim's families and how they react to the details that have been released. Fx presents The Lowdown.

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Fx's The Lowdown, premiered September 23rd on FX. Stream on Hulu. We're back now with Kaina Whitworth, who has been covering the Idaho murders for some time now, and our 2020 episode, of course, called Idaho Justice, which was just so fascinating. We didn't have the benefit of a trial because ultimately there was a plea here, so you didn't hear all the details, but there were a lot of gruesome and just difficult details that were actually being discovered and revealed. And the family members of these kids had different feelings about some of these details. And that was a whole issue. I mean, obviously for us, that was a big part of the coverage in the story and being sensitive to the families, too, right?

I think you're absolutely right. And it's important that we all realize that every single family is going to grieve in in their own unique way. I think it's important to not compare their reactions because they're not the same. And we know that Keely Gonsalves' family has really been out at the forefront. They've been the ones talking. They've been the ones fighting some battles with prosecutors and with detectives. They wanted to know everything. They wanted all the information that they could get. That was something that brought them some solace. I found myself leaning on the words of Olivia Gonsalves, Kaylee's sister, because she was really strong because she didn't want people to not know the depravity of the crime. It was important to her that people were aware that her sister was stabbed some four times, many of those times in the head and face area.

It's sickening. And the impact that this had on them as well as the family. They wanted people to know that grief and that pain, didn't they?

Yes. And to think about a mother having Loving to learn that about her daughter and sharing with you that Kaylee's mom, when the report came out that Kaylee was unrecognizable, that was really hard for Christie Gonsalves to read that. I think that they were frustrated because they were reading that at the same time that the media was reading it. They didn't have that information prior. They weren't given any exclusive information ahead of time. But then other families, like the Chapin family, they chose to be at the hearing when Brian Kauberger changed his plea to guilty, and they wanted to be there for Ethan. But when it came time for sentencing, they wanted to- They wanted nothing to do with it. Exactly. They wanted to honor him in their own way. And that is really important to them, too. And that's how they show their strength. And so it's important to really understand that every family, again, is different. And the Chapin family and the Mogen family would really like put a stop to the release of these crime scene photos. To them, why do people need to see that?

Kover, for the longest time, of course, was steadfast, not guilty, not guilty. I think we were all just waiting to see how this case was going to play out. You thought he would never plea, and he ultimately did. He was facing the death penalty. Now he is facing what? Multiple life sentences, and obviously, we'll never get out of prison. What do you know about what has happened since his sentencing.

We were the first to be able to tour the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, where he will spend the rest of his life. It's out in CUNA, Idaho. For those of you that are picturing Idaho with mountains and pine trees and water and snow. It is not that. I tell you what, it is flat and a lot of nothing out there. We went into this maximum security institution, and there's all different levels of of where people might stay. He was in the most strict level. At this point, he's in a cell for 23 hours a day. When he's moved, he's moved in restraints. Meals are regulated. We are told that if he does want to continue to adhere to his vegan diet, that that will be amenable. It's a very minimalistic lifestyle. But when we to tour it to show you the company he's keeping. When I signed my name on that guest book, I signed it right underneath people who had gone to see a Chad Daybell.

Oh, wow. Another notorious convicted murderer. We've talked about that story a lot, too. Kohlberger, famously, hasn't really said anything. We haven't heard anything publicly from him. Do you think he's going to want to tell his story at some point? Do you think you may wind up sitting across from him in prison at some point?

I tell you, I ask myself that question all the time. I have a lot of questions for him. That's for sure. I feel like from all the analysis that's been done on him, that at some point he is going to want to tell his story. I go back to some of his homework, his writing in schools, and the fact that he changed his plea. When you look at some of his studies in crime, he would say things like, false guilty plea manifest due to a lack of judicial oversight and plea deals that seem to compel defendants to enter them. That's something that he wrote. And he also said, If defendants fail to accept a plea bargain, prosecutors will pursue the strictest charges. And we know that prosecutors were pursuing the death penalty there in Idaho. They weren't backing down from that. And that's what got taken off the table in order for him to change his plea.

This story has been so captivating, and you reported it so well. I hate to say beautifully, but you did tell such a beautiful story about these lives. And I'd like to end on the note of talking about these four young people. What were their aspirations? And as you said, they were so much more than the way they died. What did the world lose in these four lives?

Yeah. I'll start with Ethan. Ethan was the eldest of triplets, and he was just that bright light in every room. And he's tall and strong and big and athletic. He had a really bright future ahead of him. He was also the leader for his siblings, for his siblings, Hunter and Macy. They looked up to him tremendously. When we sat with his family, you see Hunter Chapin becoming his own man, and you see Macy becoming her own woman, but they will live the rest of their lives without their big brother, and a piece of them will always be missing. Missing. Yeah. Ethan's story is really a heartbreaking loss, and the way that his parents have carried on his legacy has been beautiful. And so because of them, they have created this scholarship in his name. And it has gained in popularity to the point that a student will now go to the University of Idaho in the name of Ethan Chapin in perpetuity.

Oh, my gosh. That's amazing.

Isn't that an incredible legacy? And that so important to his family. All the kids have foundations like that, that their parents really want to help the next generation. There's the Maddie May Foundation as well. She was just this sweetest bundle of joy you could ever imagine. It seems like everybody you talk to has that soft spot in their heart for Maddie May. Kaylee Gonzales already had a job. She was getting ready to move. She had a job. She was going just like her dad taught her, he wanted her in college prep, and she was ready to go. She just bought her a new car, and she was going to start her whole new life. On the flip side of that, Xana Cernotal was just exploring her life in college. She had gained a lot of independence and had done a lot of really amazing things as a young adult. This is just a tremendous and gutting loss, I think, to the university, but most importantly, to these families that will never be made whole.

Yeah, never be the same. But I have to tell you, you really did a terrific job in just telling their stories and shining a bright light on these young people. Kayna, it was such a It's been a pleasure to get a chance to catch up with you. I hope we'll see each other on the same Coast one of these days.

Well, all of that means a lot. I certainly am an admirer of yours, so I hope so, too.

Thank you so much for being with us today. That does it for us today on The After Show. Kayna, we'll continue to look for this story. I'm sure you'll have updates, but you can stream 2020's episode, Idaho Justice, now on Disney Plus and Hulu. The 2020 After Show is produced by Susie Lou, Sasha Aslanian, Emily Shatz, Nora Richie, and Trevor Hastings of ABC Audio, with John Duhly, Brian Mzersky, and Alex Berenfeld of 2020. Theme music by Evan Viola. Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020, Josh Cohen, the Director of Podcasting at ABC Audio, Laura Meyer, is the executive producer.

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