The Hunt
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And in that time, I will run down seven stories, everything from the most important headlines to fascinating new information you might miss otherwise. My name's Hannah Jewell. Go follow The 7 right now, wherever you're listening, and we will get you caught up. The Moscow Police Department put out a renewed call for social media content, pictures, and videos from the community.

Investigators are still asking anyone with any information to contact the Moscow tip line. The investigation into who killed four University of Idaho students has now received 10,000 tips. This is The Idaho Massacre, a production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. Episode 6, The Hunt. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker, Jeff Shane, and Connor Powell.

Weeks after four University of Idaho students were murdered in their off-campus home, investigators are on a relentless search for the killer. As the tips rolled in, multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Idaho State Police and the FBI, were working with the Moscow PD to crack the case. They were methodically zeroing in on their main suspect, following the evidence from the mysterious white Elantra to the DNA left at the scene.

While observing Brian Koburger at his family's home in Pennsylvania, the 28-year-old was seen wearing rubber latex gloves in public and putting trash in neighbors' garbage cans. Koburger's family also noticed this bizarre behavior.

According to reports, one of his own sisters began to wonder if her brother could have been involved in the murders, at one point even saying loudly that her brother lived near the victims and drove a white Hyundai Elantra. While some in the Coburger family may have had their suspicions about him, unbeknownst to them, their own family's genetic DNA would be key to linking Brian Coburger to the murders. Big crack in this case came from DNA, specifically genetic genealogy.

Within days of the gruesome murders, police suspected the white Hyundai Elantra seen repeatedly driving near the King Road crime site was connected to the murders. Investigators immediately began compiling a list of white Elantras registered in the region. Investigators first sought cell records. They then most likely looked for every person who pinged the Moscow Tower and owned a white Elantra.

But the search of the long list of white Elantras didn't turn up anything conclusive for weeks. Here's Jeff and Stephanie. As November was coming to a close, the Moscow police assured the public that there was no threat to the community and that they were in fact making progress.

And at this point, cops were really combing through thousands of tips and pieces of information, most of which, frankly, led nowhere. Can you imagine the pressure? Not only are they concerned about the safety of this college town, but they have the whole world watching them. I remember this time. The public really wanted information. And every day that went by without an arrest, people were getting angrier and angrier.

Yeah, it's a really unfair expectation. But at this point, there really was no credible suspect or murder weapon.

And then by early December, investigators had combed through the victims' classmates, their friends, as well as any perhaps registered sex offenders in the area, stalkers, any individuals known for violently harassing people. They even looked into a local white supremacist. But again, sadly, it all led to nothing. The white Elantra was truly the best lead.

But it's an incredibly common car. In 2021, Hyundai sold over 124,000 Elantras. In fact, the number of Elantras sold last year compared to the year before increased 47%. So it's basically like finding a needle in a haystack. For weeks, Brian Kohlberger was simply a name on an ever-growing list. One of the many white Elantra owners. And then he was the lone suspect and under arrest.

Suspect Brian Koberger is behind bars after investigators linked his DNA at the crime scene to the DNA taken from the trash at his parents' home. The official public story laid out in the probable cause affidavit is that investigators positively identified Koberger by matching DNA evidence from the knife sheath to Koberger's father's DNA.

But investigators in the Idaho police lab didn't have a positive DNA match for the 28-year-old criminology student until at least December 27th, when a surveillance crew pulled his father's DNA from the trash. So how did investigators know, and with such confidence, to start surveillance on Koberger long before the conclusive DNA match? Investigative genetic genealogy was used to point them in his direction.

The path to positively identifying the Washington State University PhD student employed anew, and at the same time one of the most controversial modern crime-solving techniques. It's a DNA method that is only reluctantly talked about by law enforcement. Before we can explain what genetic genealogy is and why it's so rare and controversial, we need to explain how DNA material is normally collected and used in a criminal investigation.

So DNA is what makes us what we are. And every single cell of our body, with a few exceptions, has the same DNA. I like to describe it as an enormous encyclopedia. That's Daniel Padini, the head of the forensic sciences department at George Washington University, speaking with Jeff. And every cell of our body kind of

harvests or looks at the parts of that encyclopedia that it needs to become what it needs to develop in. So the liver cell will look at the encyclopedia chapter on how to become a liver cell. The retina cell will do the same, but it's going to be a different chapter. But the entire encyclopedia is present in every single cell. So we can look at parts of this encyclopedia that are different among individuals.

And we can generate a DNA profile that has a very, very low frequency in the population to the point that we can essentially identify a single individual. How has that now kind of changed the way investigators work on criminal cases? Yeah, it really has changed.

dramatically changed the forensic investigations in terms of being able to identify an individual that was at the crime scene. If biological evidence is recovered at a crime scene, a DNA profile can be generated and then compared either to a database, everybody's heard about the CODIS, Combined DNA Index System, which is a repository of DNA profiles from convicted offenders,

or directly to the DNA of a suspect in order to identify the person that left their DNA at the crime scene. And as we know, there was touch DNA found on it. Can you explain to us what touch DNA is? Touch DNA is a very general term that refers to the DNA that is deposited on a surface through touching it.

There's a lot of different types of cells that can be deposited when touching a surface. For example, if I scratch my nose or I cough in my hand, there may be some cells that come from the mucus or from saliva. There's also epithelial cells from my skin that I'm going to deposit. And also, there's a lot of cell-free DNA that is secreted in sweat.

So there's a bunch of different types of sources of DNA that we deposit. So exactly what touch DNA is, we don't know, but it's a combination of all of those. And you can't really see it with the naked eye. So you have to trust or you have to make some assumptions. And generally, you're going to try and collect that from surfaces that will be

have been touched. Is it how we see in the movies where they like dust it and there's like a perfect thumbprint on the ground or wherever? No, it's not quite like that. Sometimes if there's a blood stain or a semen stain or saliva stain, then yes, it's pretty simple. You swab that area, you transfer the biological stain onto a swab, and then you extract the DNA directly from the swab.

At times, though, you're not able to see the DNA. You can assume that there is DNA in that area, and so you swab that surface. In the case that we're talking about, they found this knife sheath, and they swabbed the area. At least that's my understanding. They swabbed the area around the butt.

and they extracted the DNA from that. But you don't necessarily see it and you don't know it's there until you've completed the extraction process and you went through a second process that's called DNA quantification. The DNA quantification process allows us to determine how much DNA there is and also the quality of that DNA in terms of it being degraded or potentially inhibited.

So if you're an investigator, you just kind of try to get DNA off of anything without kind of, you're kind of blindly doing it. You're thinking, okay, there could be DNA here, could be DNA here. And then it's not until you test it that you actually are aware of if there is DNA and then you have to figure out how much DNA. Obviously you can't swab an entire apartment. That's just not practical.

and the DNA extraction process and analysis is expensive, and it takes time. So you need to be frugal and keep in mind the resources that are available. So you tend to do an evaluation of the crime scene and based on the scenario, identify pieces of evidence that have the greatest chance of providing useful information for the case.

Here again, Stephanie and Jeff. Since its creation in 1987, DNA testing has proven to be an incredible useful tool in identifying criminals. It completely changed the criminal justice system. How it applies to this case is really fascinating. We know that investigators pulled a single source male touch DNA off the button of the knife sheath that was left at the murder scene.

Touched DNA is DNA transferred from a person to an object via contact with the object itself. It's called touched DNA because it only requires very small samples. For example, from the skin cell left on something after it's been touched or casually handled, or from footprints.

So cops have this piece of touch DNA and they tried to link that to criminals already in the system. Because as you may or may not know, when someone is arrested, they have to give a fingerprint, which then gets put into law enforcement's database system. So let's say whoever did commit this massacre also had robbed a bank years ago, cops would get a match and have all the suspect's information. But that didn't happen here because by all accounts, Brian did not have any kind of a criminal record.

Maybe he was busted for tailgating or something. But that was the extent of it. I would think that since he had wanted to work in law enforcement and applied for that internship, that he might have had to give his fingerprint at some point. But there was no match in the system of DNA at the crime scene. So unfortunately, this was just a dead end. Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in a moment. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford, and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty.

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With pressure mounting and leads coming up empty, investigators turn to genetic genealogy as an alternative way of identifying DNA on the knife sheath. Here's forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan.

The cool thing about genetic genealogy, and it's almost as if you've got people that have discovered this thing just in the last few years, where it's this fascinating methodology of tracking down things or putting an identity to things or people more specifically that otherwise have remained kind of cloaked in secrecy for many, many years.

How would you say it differs or doesn't differ from regular DNA testing? When it comes to testing for any kind of biological element as it's tied back to DNA, the feds maintain a database that is actually referred to, it's the FBI's database, it's actually referred to as CODIS, which is Combined DNA Index System.

And people hear this term thrown around quite a bit. And I'm sure that folks have heard about, you know, where you have sex offenders, where they are mandated by court to give up a sample. And once that sample is rendered unto the courts and unto the system, it's banked at that point in time. So those are known offenders. All right.

On the other side of the house, you have what's referred to as a forensic database. Those are these horrible crimes, just like the Golden State Killer, that have gone undetected for many years. Those are forensic cases where you have a sample, which is essentially the DNA code that's built into all of us.

But yet, you don't have an identity that goes specifically to that person. And so those are the unknowns. And when you're looking at serialized crimes, for instance, if you can get a DNA sample from multiple cases and it kind of funnel it back into the system, what they're looking for in the forensic side of the house is to see if you get multiple hits,

from a single individual and that gives you an idea of that you have a serial perpetrator for instance on your hands now here's the thing when it comes to genetic genealogy this throws kind of a wrinkle into everything because for years and years it's been all about unknown assailants when you have

an event where you have DNA deposition at a scene, let's say for instance from any kind of body fluid, blood, semen, whatever the case, saliva at the scene, or maybe even partial DNA that we get from touch DNA. If you can capture that bit of biological sample

you can kind of kick it into the next level with genetic genealogy because there's this massive database that exists out there of people that are seeking their ancestors or perhaps people that are looking to find out their parentage, people that have been put up for adoption. Who are they related to?

And so many government agencies look at this as this kind of broad ranging spectrum that they can dig into and utilize that to kind of connect the dots, if you would, as to who an unknown perpetrator might be. And, you know, here's the thing.

Many of these cases are solved by identifying cousins of all things. And we all have cousins. Many of us are related to one another and we have no idea. And so you look for this connectivity and then you kind of begin to narrow this down with genetic genealogy.

Despite having their own in-state forensic laboratory, the Idaho State Police contacted a private third-party company to conduct the genealogy testing.

Othram is a Texas-based company that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy and has helped resolve unsolved murders and identify unknown victims. With the help of the FBI, the firm was able to create a more extensive DNA profile of the suspected killer. And then it was uploaded to commercial genetic testing databases. Jeff and Stephanie.

We don't know where the data profile was uploaded. Most likely, though, it was GEDmatch or Family Tree DNA, which are both familial DNA testing services. On these sites, you can find out what your heritage is or if you have any long-lost cousins across the world. They are also both commercial websites that allow law enforcement searches. They differ from 23andMe or AncestryDNA, which do not allow investigators to search their records.

That does make perfect sense from a consumer standpoint. I mean, look, if you go to a website like 23andMe or AncestryDNA, you may not want your personal data getting out to law enforcement or personal data regarding anybody in your family.

I would imagine that these companies are frankly afraid that law enforcement has access to everyone's DNA and then people won't upload their info, thus hurting their ultimate bottom line. Privacy is a pretty major concern for this industry. Here again, Jeff speaking with forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan. And would you say that's why it's controversial? Because every Tom, Dick and Harry can kind of help the police catch their cousin in a crime?

Most people in the population that are submitting their DNA, they don't have a point of reference for what their constitutional standing is as it applies to privacy and these sorts of things. And, you know, I think that for many folks, when they render this DNA sample, and it's generally a cheek swab or a cheek scraping, where you go in, you take the sample, you submit it to one of these companies, and they begin to run your profile. You don't

have this expectation that this is going to be used to solve a crime. Now, many people might not have a problem with that, but others do. They're not entering into this agreement with a company so that they're going to be crime solvers. They want to determine the mystery that surrounds their heritage and to try to determine who they came from. The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that you do not have like a baked-in expectation of privacy if you

freely surrender something. Okay. Particularly in this case, we're talking about genetic material. So they've held that there is no expectation of privacy for a third party. And so you've got these two that go back and forth. What it comes down to, I think probably for many of these companies, people famously like ancestry.com. We've got 23andMe that have been out there for a while. They have vigorously stated that

that they are not working with any government agency and they're not going to surrender anything unless they're being presented with a subpoena, that they are in fact being compelled to offer up these profiles that they have. And so that in and of itself is kind of striking when it comes to the utility of forensic genealogy. And is that why you think to use it or to talk about it when they do use it?

I think to a great degree, police are reticent to reveal their sources when it comes to, and you generally don't find out, the veil is not lifted, if you will, you know, from their source, how they went about accomplishing these tasks. There are companies out there

that do in fact aid in the facilitation of this. Ortham comes to mind in particular. They've been around for a few years now and they've certainly made a name for themselves and are highly regarded from a scientific perspective and the methodologies that they employ and they've had great success. The average person on the street, they're asked this question.

How much do you value your privacy? If the whole thing turns upon your DNA, are you willing to surrender that bit of privacy that you have in order to solve a crime that might facilitate someone being taken off the street and that sort of thing? And it's not necessarily a very simple answer. It can be very, very complicated.

This case, I think, is different because we hear about it so much for cold cases, but this is an active investigation where genetic genealogy came into play. So obviously, question four, it's normally in cold cases, this is a little bit of an outlier.

Yeah, because this is in fact not a cold case. From the very first day that this happened, you could hear the whisperings already. I'd say probably within the first 12 hours of me being on the air and covering the case, from a forensic standpoint, I had questions being thrown at me repeatedly about DNA and DNA linkage to a potential perpetrator. How is it possible that

that a subject could go into an environment which we can, I think, pretty safely state is just a bloodbath and not leave some essence of themself behind. And you have the genetic connection at the scene in that home where this massacre took place

And then, apparently, you have genetic connectivity at Koberger's family's house. So now you're looking at two things that are kind of coalescing here. They're coming together and you begin to create this picture. It's a damning bit of evidence, I think. Now, the courts, the attorneys will get together and they'll begin to question things like sourcing and procedurally how was this done.

How was the assessment done? How can this actually be validated? How do we know the sample may or may not have been contaminated because it is so very fragile? Those questions will come up, but the fact is you have this arguably astronomical possibility

numerical mountain that the defense is going to have to climb in this case. And look, I don't necessarily think that the DNA data that they gathered there in Pennsylvania and the DNA that we know about, at least thus far, from what was collected at this quadruple homicide is the end of the DNA. There very well might be more. We just don't know what it is at this point in time.

What's your opinion as an expert? Do you think genetic genealogy should be used for arrests or narrowing down suspect lists? I think that there is utility for it, certainly. I don't know that I have encountered accountants

a case where it was turned around this quickly. You know, because look, it seems as though we've been covering Idaho forever and ever at this point, but we haven't. It's really been a very short period of time and this profile was turned out very quickly. So there is obviously provable utility relative to the tool. I think that it can potentially be a very slippery slope from a privacy standpoint. There are so many cases out there that are cold

And you would want nothing more than to have answers to these things that have kind of lingered in our mind and actually have become part and parcel of our history. And certainly in the true crime community, can you even imagine if they were able to, say, for instance, come up with a bit of unidentified DNA from, say, the Black Dahlia case or from Jack the Ripper case?

And they were able to construct some kind of DNA profile based upon that. I think a lot of us would really like to know who those individuals might be that committed these crimes. However, we have to keep in the forefront of our mind what our expectations are as American citizens. Do we have a right to privacy? And this is not just...

Maybe our records or our papers that you're talking about government authorities having access to. We're talking about our base genetic code.

Do you think it's the future? Like, is there any way to stop to, you know, kind of put this back in the box or is it like now police have this in their tool belt, they're going to use it? No, it's, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. We're beyond that now we've crossed the Rubicon. It will be used and continue to be used. I just hope that the people that wield the tool have the best interest of the citizenry at large because no one in our population is guilty until they are in fact proven guilty.

A quadruple homicide in a college town is stuff that just...

doesn't happen every day. And it's one of these moments in time that it has created extraordinary circumstances. And to my way of thinking, the investigative authorities that are involved in this case went to extraordinary measures in order to facilitate the solving of this case, or at least to give them an indication as to who may have had a hand in this. And that's why they went to these great lengths using genetic genealogy.

Let's stop here for another break. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford, and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty.

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Once FBI investigators and Othram genealogists had the DNA, they began to look for full or partial matches to the suspected Idaho killer's DNA. The first results were distant relatives. Slowly, they created a massive family tree that utilized the genetic information of the Kohlberger's immediate family, cousins, and all of their distant relatives. That tree would have provided a short list of potential suspects within the Kohlberger family tree.

Again, Stephanie and Jeff. The most famous successful case of genetic genealogy mapping is the Golden State Killer. In the 1970s and 80s, he terrorized California, murdering at least 13 people. Likely, he killed and raped many more. But even with DNA evidence, years went by with no solid leads and the cases went cold.

Why? Because the killer wasn't in any criminal database. But in 2018, investigators had an idea. They used public DNA information to see if they could locate and identify family members of the Golden State Killer using genetic genealogy mapping. After painstakingly mapping out the killer's genetic links, police were able to identify Joseph James D'Angelo, a retired police officer living outside Sacramento, California.

To me, it's super interesting that he, just like Kohlberger aspired to be, was also in law enforcement. I agree. So anyways, this technique is now being used to solve hundreds of cold cases.

I'll say this, though. It really does require a shift in the process and the procedures that are currently in place to catching a bad guy because labs really aren't set up to do this type of genetic genealogy mapping. They also don't regularly employ genealogists who map family trees. But all that might change because of the success of the Idaho investigation.

On the morning of December 19th, investigators positively identified their lone suspect. By mapping the genetic similarities of the killer's relatives, police were able to confirm through DNA genetic genealogy mapping that 28-year-old Brian Koburger was the likely killer.

Can you imagine that day for the hardworking investigators on this case? Yeah, Kohlberger was already one of their suspects. His name had been forwarded to investigators. He drove a white Hyundai Elantra. He lived near the victims, had exhibited odd behavior, and his cell phone had pinged in the area of the crime. He checked every box.

And yet, without a murder weapon or some kind of DNA evidence, police still don't really have any real case against him. While it might seem like a lot in hindsight, at the time, it was all really circumstantial. To make an arrest, cops really needed something more. And it's not really clear if Koberger was quote-unquote "the suspect" before the genealogy info came back, or if his name was just on a long list of persons of interest.

With Kohlberger now identified as the prime suspect, investigators worked to strengthen their case against him, applying for a search warrant of Kohlberger's phone activity and the time period around the murders. On the morning of the killings, the results showed Kohlberger's phone pinging a tower near his home before moving south at a rapid speed and then disconnecting from the cellular phone system.

Here's reporter Chris Bargo. So at 2.42 in the morning, Brian Koberger's cell phone is recorded as sort of being on the network in Pullman, Washington, where his dormitory is on Washington State University campus. Then a few minutes later, it goes off the network and is disconnected.

From that point on, there's just counts of people seeing his white Hyundai Elantra. So his white Hyundai Elantra is seen leaving Pullman shortly after that, and then around 3:30 it's seen in Moscow. Now the direct route from Pullman to Moscow is about 15 minutes tops, and this is late at night so there's not going to be any traffic. So it's assumed he took some sort of way that would have gone around that sort of main road.

During the exact moments of the murders, Koberger's cell phone was offline and wouldn't return until 4.48 a.m., at least 20 minutes after investigators say the murders took place.

When Koberger's phone does reconnect, it pings off several towers south of Moscow and maps an odd early morning travel pattern for the next 45 minutes. The data shows Koberger driving on back roads and taking an off-the-beaten-track route to his home in Pullman, Washington. It's a difficult alibi for him because he has to explain that phone call pinging off the tower in the middle of nowhere at 4.45 a.m. on the night of the murders.

Police also obtained cell phone data that showed that Kohlberger's phone was in the area of the house on King Road at least a dozen times in the weeks before the attack. By December 23rd, police were closing in on Kohlberger, but investigators still need a direct genetic comparison between Kohlberger and the DNA on the knife sheath before making an arrest. Four days later, Pennsylvania State Police are tasked with watching Brian Kohlberger pull trash from his parents' home.

On December 28th, DNA results show that the male DNA pulled from the trash can was a 99.9998% likely to be the biological father of the DNA pulled from the knife sheath left on Madison Mogan's bed. This parental link was the last piece of evidence needed for an arrest warrant. Koberger was arrested shortly after.

When Brian Coburger was arrested in the early hours of December 30th, his family didn't know the role their own DNA played in his capture. But they did release a statement expressing sympathy for the four Idaho families who lost their precious children. Coburger's family also said they had fully cooperated with law enforcement agencies in an attempt to seek the truth. They also asked for privacy as the case moved forward through the legal process.

Later, they found out their own family's DNA led investigators to Brian Koberger, Stephanie, and Jeff. DNA has become increasingly important for successful prosecutions thanks to something called the CSI effect. With shows like CSI, Cold Case, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, and basically every other CBS series, everyone thinks they're a criminal expert. So a large portion of jurors expect that the prosecutors will present some type of scientific data as part of their case.

which in some cases is a very fair assessment. And look, things like eyewitnesses and motives are still very important. But without any kind of scientific DNA or firearm ballistics or fingerprints, it's really hard to get a conviction.

The CSI effect is fascinating as it may also affect how criminals themselves act. In the year 2000, when CSI premiered, 46.9% of all rape cases in the United States were resolved by police. By 2005, the rate had fallen to 41.3%. Some investigators attributed this decline to the CSI effect, as crime shows often inadvertently explain in detail how criminals can conceal or destroy evidence.

But back to how this affects this case. Look, as we know, our legal system demands proof beyond a reasonable doubt before we can convict. And the jurors see these types of scientific tests as frankly undeniable proof of guilt, whereas eyewitnesses or potential motives, those can be sometimes imperfect. There have been multiple studies that say more than 70% of jurors expect scientific evidence like DNA in murder or rape prosecutions.

And really, it has done extraordinary work in terms of people being released from prison because the DNA testing obviously proved their innocence despite the fact that they had been convicted.

So when you think about it, it's not surprising that Idaho prosecutors have put a ton of weight into the DNA elements of this case. If this does go to trial, it's safe to assume that prosecutors will have to show that Brian Koberger was in the house and his DNA was all over the crime scene where Kaylee, Madison, Zanna and Ethan were killed. The question is, though, is that going to be an impossible task? More on that next time.

For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kt underscore studios. The Idaho Massacre is produced by Stephanie Lidecker, Jeff Shane, Connor Powell, Chris Bargo, Gabriel Castillo, and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa. Music by Jared Aston. The Idaho Massacre is a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios.

For more podcasts like this, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Deanna, who you may know as Body Movin'. My friend and I, John Green, were featured in the Netflix documentary, Don't F with Cats. On our new podcast, True Crimes with John and Deanna, we're turning our online investigative skills to some of the most unexplained, unsolved, and most ignored cases. ♪

Police say 33-year-old Bridegan was shot dead. Gunned down in front of his two-year-old daughter. Detectives confirmed that it was a targeted attack. It appears to be an execution-style assassination. This is very active, so we have to be careful. I've heard that there's a house that has some bodies in the basement. I knew. I just knew something was wrong. Maybe there's something more sinister at play than just one young girl going missing. If you know something, heard something, please...

It's never too late to do the right thing. This is True Crimes with John and Deanna. The production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. Justice is something that takes different shapes or forms.

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