Skip to playerSkip to main content
New York Post
  • 4 weeks ago
Transcript
00:00:00It's a very complex case. It's not open and shut.
00:00:02I swore an oath on the Constitution to protect the Constitution of the United States at the risk of my
00:00:10own life.
00:00:10They tell you how to use a gun. They tell you when you cannot use a gun, the rules of
00:00:15deadly force.
00:00:16They never, ever tell you what's going to happen if you do.
00:00:29Welcome to Podforce One, and today we're joined by Chris Whitcomb, who is the author of a new book called
00:00:36Broken Plea, the explosive search for the truth behind the Idaho murders.
00:00:42He also is a former member of the FBI's hostage rescue team, involved in a couple of pretty controversial rescues
00:00:51and hostage situations.
00:00:52So we'll talk about that and lots more. Thanks for joining us, Chris.
00:00:58Hi, Miranda. Nice to meet you. Nice to join you.
00:01:01You too. And I always like meeting a former FBI agent, especially one like you, who was really in the
00:01:09thick of things,
00:01:10who has turned author and successful author.
00:01:14And I'm interested to know this book particularly grabbed my fancy.
00:01:19My agent actually pointed me to it and said it was, you know, explosive research that you've done.
00:01:29And it's an open and shut case, I thought.
00:01:32Brian Kohlberger was found guilty, took a guilty plea.
00:01:36Um, that's it. He's, he's in jail for the rest of his life.
00:01:41Why did you start thinking that there was something odd about it?
00:01:46Uh, I agree with you. I thought it was an open and shut case.
00:01:49I knew almost nothing about this case until shortly before the trial and then really learned most about this case
00:01:56after the plea agreement.
00:01:57I thought the same thing. Working in law enforcement as I had, I looked at the evidence that I saw.
00:02:04I listened to the judge. Everything seemed completely normal. I really didn't pay any attention.
00:02:10Uh, he pled guilty and then everything changed.
00:02:13Friends of mine in law enforcement who had access to various parts of the information reached out to me to
00:02:18try and explain how,
00:02:20how, when Brian Kohlberger pled guilty, many, many things people wanted to know about the case went away.
00:02:26He's going to prison. He did not allocute or did not explain anything at the change of plea hearing.
00:02:32And when that happened, we lost all hope of knowing about his motive, his means, uh, the mechanism of the
00:02:38crimes,
00:02:39the location, or even a description of the murder weapons.
00:02:42And, uh, now almost a year ago, I think those things are very compelling.
00:02:47It's a very complex case. It's not open and shut.
00:02:49No, I think we all thought it was rather peculiar that they just went straight to the plea deal because
00:02:55this was such a high profile case
00:02:57because the parents of those young victims wanted to get some closure in court.
00:03:04They wanted to know why did he do it?
00:03:07He never even said anything to the court about his motive.
00:03:11He just seemed to sit there smirking the whole time.
00:03:14Um, it was such a, you know, unfathomable case that this one man could go in to that multi-floor
00:03:24building
00:03:25and managed to kill five young people, including a young man, a strong young man.
00:03:33Uh, and they were all pretty active kids.
00:03:36Um, so, and he wasn't a muscle man.
00:03:39So how did that happen?
00:03:41You know, that's one of the first questions I asked, Marianne.
00:03:44It's a, it's a, a great question many people have asked ever since.
00:03:47All we know, and I, and I don't want to talk in legal terms, but we all stipulate unequivocally
00:03:53that Brian Koberger pled guilty to four counts of murder and one count of burglary,
00:03:58that he accepted life in prison without the possibility of parole and waived a lot of his appeals.
00:04:04So we all know that happened.
00:04:06The next question, as you just said, is how police in their own investigation and prosecution
00:04:12in the change of plea hearing, when they, uh, reviewed the evidence, uh, they placed the
00:04:19timeframe somewhere around five minutes, five minutes or less, uh, for various reasons.
00:04:24So you ask those questions.
00:04:26He went to into the house.
00:04:27He went to the third floor.
00:04:29He found two women in bed, committed two horrific murders, went downstairs, went to another part
00:04:34of the house, committed two more horrific murders, somehow got back to his car, drove
00:04:39his car around.
00:04:39And that's what we see in a one, one, one, two video as a white Hyundai Elantra speeds away.
00:04:45So the timeline, depending on what the prosecution says at any given time during the course of
00:04:51this is probably somewhere of less than five minutes, maybe less than four minutes.
00:04:55And that's, that's, uh, that's pretty hard to, it's pretty hard to understand.
00:05:00And I guess because there was no trial, there was never any opportunity for the defense really
00:05:07to say, well, this is implausible.
00:05:10Uh, and the prosecution was comfortable that they had their man.
00:05:14But I think the theory that you put forward, and I misspoke before it was for people.
00:05:20Of course, there was another, uh, girl in the, in the house who sort of opened her door
00:05:25and peeked out and heard some noise and went back to bed.
00:05:29Um, so it could have been worse.
00:05:32But, um, again, what, what is it that, um, that made people, made the prosecution so certain
00:05:42that there wasn't another person involved?
00:05:45And is that one of your theories?
00:05:49Um, great question.
00:05:50I, I, I know this is odd to say because it's a 430 page book.
00:05:54I spent six months researching it.
00:05:56I don't have a theory, to be honest with you.
00:05:58All I do is look and present things that I, as an investigator, both as an investigative
00:06:03journalist, and I've done, I've worked for NBC News, the New York Times, GQ magazine.
00:06:07Um, I've worked for various publications, um, not always as an investigative reporter, but
00:06:13I've, I've, you know, worked in major, um, uh, for companies, media companies.
00:06:21Um, I don't have any theories, but I present what would stand out that just doesn't make
00:06:27sense.
00:06:27And one of those things that just doesn't make sense to me, and that I talk about in
00:06:32the book is how one person could commit these crimes alone because the nature of the injuries
00:06:36and because of what the crime scenes tell us, the blood spatter, the evidence in different
00:06:41parts of the house.
00:06:42And two, um, how it's possible if one person did it, that he get out of the house without
00:06:48leaving every, almost any evidence behind and nothing outside the house.
00:06:53Nothing has ever been found outside that house, in Brian Koberger's car, in his apartment,
00:06:58anywhere when he went back to his parents' house in Pennsylvania.
00:07:00There are really, uh, compelling questions that I raised in the book.
00:07:05Um, but I don't, I don't have the answers.
00:07:07I asked the reader to look at these things and the reader to weigh the evidence and come
00:07:13up with conclusions.
00:07:15Do you think he's not guilty?
00:07:17No, I don't.
00:07:19And, and I mean this in all sincerity.
00:07:20I do not know if Brian Koberger's took the guilty plea, as many people do, he was facing
00:07:27the death penalty.
00:07:28The death penalty in Idaho at that time was the firing squad.
00:07:31Is it plausible because of all the preponderance of evidence and because Ann Taylor, he's a defense
00:07:36attorney, had lost in so many motions before Judge Hippler talking about the evidence?
00:07:42It may, it's, it's, it's possible.
00:07:45I'm not saying it's likely, I'm saying it's possible.
00:07:47But a person facing the firing squad might say, I'll take life in prison because the,
00:07:52the evidence is overwhelming.
00:07:54Um, it, and the other, of course, is that he did it.
00:07:57If he did it, why did he not allocute?
00:07:59Why did he not explain anything?
00:08:01And if he did take those secrets to a life in prison and to the grave, ultimately, what
00:08:07will we ever know about this case?
00:08:08To me, it seemed like, uh, we needed answers and I had an opportunity to offer some.
00:08:16Yes.
00:08:17And I, I think for the parents, you could tell, uh, they were so, they felt so cheated, uh,
00:08:23after that plea.
00:08:24Some of them didn't even know that it was coming.
00:08:26And I think that, you know, you, you felt that Kohlberger, this was his final exertion
00:08:34of power over the victims and their families who he's, he'd caused so much grief to keeping
00:08:40that secret to himself.
00:08:41You could almost see him smirking in court as he said nothing.
00:08:45Very much so.
00:08:46He's a very odd guy.
00:08:47Uh, there was one motion in Lemony that his, uh, his, uh, defense attorney, Ann Taylor filed,
00:08:53uh, asking the judge to, to mandate that the prosecution did not refer to him as a psychopath
00:08:59in trial.
00:09:00So the discussion of Brian Kohlberger's habits, his social interactions, his behaviors is widely
00:09:07talked about.
00:09:08It's widely discussed to the point where she felt she had to mandate that, you know, correct
00:09:13the language in front of a jury.
00:09:15There's no question.
00:09:16He's a very, very odd guy.
00:09:18Um, whether that odd behavior, uh, in any way suggests someone capable of these four
00:09:25horrific murders, you know, that, that's for the behavioralist to decide, to decide.
00:09:30And that's certainly a conversation.
00:09:32So I wanted to go through the evidence that you've uncovered, that you've erased questions
00:09:37about the, the one to me, that's the most telling or the most curious is that one of the
00:09:45victims had, uh, Ethan, uh, the young man had in his hands, some hair that did not test to
00:09:53be Brian Kohlberger's.
00:09:55So whose was it?
00:09:56Great question.
00:09:57Um, when Ethan died in bed, he had human hair and I know it was human because of lab tests
00:10:04we'll talk about in what appeared to be a close fist that had relaxed slightly.
00:10:08Uh, when he was taken to autopsy, the, the lab, the lab analysts took the hair, they tested
00:10:16it and they found it to be human hair.
00:10:18They found it to be about six inches in length and that it was dark blonde, light brown with
00:10:23reddish tint.
00:10:25Um, Brian Kohlberger's hair doesn't fit any of those characteristics.
00:10:28Is it possible that he just had hair in his hands somehow?
00:10:31Um, certainly anything's possible.
00:10:34What really stands out is that police found, um, and you can track it in photographs, his
00:10:39hand on the bed frame.
00:10:41And when he was taken away, there was a bloodstain and in that bloodstain on the bed was more of
00:10:49this hair that was fit the same characteristics.
00:10:52And that hair was never found until more than two years later when a defense expert went up
00:10:57to look at the evidence in preparation for trial and found that hair.
00:11:01It was never even taken as evidence, um, by authorities and tested at all ever to this
00:11:07day.
00:11:08I believe it hasn't been.
00:11:09And I, I believe that the prosecution and, uh, because this was after the trial, I believe
00:11:14it's not been tested though.
00:11:15I'm not certain of that.
00:11:16So does that description, the hair fit any of the other victims?
00:11:22No, certainly not as Anna.
00:11:25And so the, the next question would be, how did that hair, and it's a fairly significant
00:11:29quality of hair, uh, quantity.
00:11:31It's not four or five strands.
00:11:33It's very visible with the human eye in the bed.
00:11:36And there'd be DNA on the follicle.
00:11:38Well, that's the next question, Marie.
00:11:40That's a, that's the perfect question.
00:11:41DNA is such a big part of this case.
00:11:43It's such a big part of the case.
00:11:44We've tracked blood flow around the house.
00:11:46We've tracked, um, many, many, many components you would expect to find in a forensic analysis
00:11:52of a crime scene through DNA.
00:11:54In this case, it was not tested for DNA.
00:11:56That particular hair was not tested for DNA.
00:11:59And that's incredible.
00:12:00There are other, um, pieces of evidence you've questioned.
00:12:03Uh, the knife sheath is an important one.
00:12:07And you talk about a break in the chain of custody.
00:12:11Tell us about that.
00:12:12You know, it's a bit esoteric for some people.
00:12:14It's important for my line of work.
00:12:16When I was an FBI agent, let me explain that.
00:12:18When you find evidence at a crime scene, you have to take that evidence.
00:12:21You have to package that evidence.
00:12:22And the evidence moves from the crime scene to the police department, uh, through a, via
00:12:27car or whatever, to a laboratory.
00:12:28And the defense wants to prove that went from one place to another place continuously in
00:12:37a way that has been documented.
00:12:38So anybody that touched it, anybody that could possibly have contaminated it, that there's
00:12:43a track record for that.
00:12:45In this case, the evidence was found, this knife sheath was found on the third floor,
00:12:50variously in one of two places.
00:12:51It was placed in a bag and it went to the crime scene.
00:12:54It was, it had a barcode on the bottom, which the Moscow police department said was, um, a
00:12:59a tracking system, an electronic tracking system, the barcode.
00:13:02However, it was taken to the crime lab.
00:13:05And at some point, well after the evidence was taken, they went back and put two handwritten,
00:13:11uh, chain of custody forms on the bag.
00:13:15They suggest, and people would argue that, that, uh, that that's not the case, that the
00:13:21chain of custody would not have been an issue at trial.
00:13:25Many defense attorneys would disagree with that.
00:13:28In my own experience as an FBI agent prosecuting, uh, crimes, violent crimes.
00:13:34If I had presented a piece of evidence without a chain of custody, I would have, um, it would,
00:13:39it would not have been, um, acceptable.
00:13:43It would not have been acceptable.
00:13:44So that's one aspect is the chain of custody that would have been contested had there been
00:13:49a trial and again, there wasn't, why was it not contested by Ann Taylor before that?
00:13:54And I determined and talk about in the book, the fact that it was not found by her experts
00:13:59until just before the plea agreement.
00:14:01So one might argue, and this would be, Ann Taylor could only talk about this herself.
00:14:07One would suppose that she just didn't see it.
00:14:09She just, this was a mountain, a true mountain of information that she had to go through and
00:14:15deal with and investigate. And this would have been a very small thing that was not discovered
00:14:20until her team of experts found it very, very close to the trial date. And by that time,
00:14:27it, the, you know, we're almost at the change of plea.
00:14:31And Brian Kohlberger, um, himself, you mentioned that there was no DNA evidence,
00:14:38no blood in his car at his home where he lived with his parents. Um, he was a PhD in
00:14:46criminology.
00:14:48Uh, he, I guess, knew about how to commit the perfect murder. Um, he, he was wearing a mask,
00:14:56according to the, a witness in the house, the other young girl. Um, and I guess gloves and,
00:15:04you know, maybe disposed of his clothes. I mean, there is a way, isn't there to just disguise all
00:15:10DNA evidence? Um, great question. And I think it's really important to point out that what the
00:15:16prosecution said they found, uh, of his DNA on the KBAR and knife sheath was microscopic. You're
00:15:24talking about a small number of human cells and that's all it, that's all it takes. I mean,
00:15:28all you need is a, is a very, very small amount, but it was a very small amount that wasn't
00:15:32really
00:15:32identifiable, uh, visible to the human eye. Okay. So we're talking about traces, tiny, tiny
00:15:37microscopic traces of DNA. The killer in this, in this case, Brian Koberger, uh, was, we know that
00:15:45he was soaked in blood because he tracked it around the house. That's unequivocal. Somehow that blood
00:15:51tracked around the house was found nowhere on the floors, uh, on the second floor of the house. There
00:15:56was a trace found later after the fact with, uh, I believe with luminol, one of the blood identify,
00:16:01uh, identification things. Um, but other than that, there was not. And then once he left through
00:16:06the kitchen through sliding glass doors, or that's what we believe based on witness statements,
00:16:11um, that he went out through the kitchen doors. One might ask the obvious question. If all of this
00:16:17happened in less than four minutes, uh, and this person is soaked in blood from these horrific crimes,
00:16:22how did he get out of the house without, he tracked it all over the house. How, once he left
00:16:28the house,
00:16:28was it not found anywhere outside? It wasn't found in the kitchen. It wasn't found on the doors. How
00:16:33do you open the doors? It wasn't found on the concrete outside or any place else. Then he ran to
00:16:37his car, jumped in his car. It's pretty difficult to understand how he could have taken off all his
00:16:42clothes, um, without any blood transfer whatsoever, gotten in his car naked, I would suppose, and driven
00:16:51away. Um, it's not surprising they found nothing in Pennsylvania. It is surprising they didn't find
00:16:56anything anywhere else, anywhere else. Well, I guess, I mean, there are really only two
00:17:00possible, three, I guess. Uh, one that, um, it wasn't him. Uh, two, that he, he was, he did plan
00:17:11and
00:17:12train for this, that he stripped his clothes off. He had something else underneath, put them into a bag,
00:17:18clean bag, tied it up, put the gloves in there, carried the bag to the car. Surely that would
00:17:26account for it. And then somehow disposed of that bag and it's never been found.
00:17:30Yes, absolutely. Very plausible. Uh, it comes down to when you look at the evidence and,
00:17:35and I do in great detail in this book, it's 430 page book. And I use, it's all based on,
00:17:40on documents. This, uh, this is not a story. This is a forensic examination of the crimes themselves
00:17:46based on what we now know. Which is great because nobody did it.
00:17:50Nobody did it. And I, and I've got to say this, you know, the title of this book is the
00:17:53explosive,
00:17:54uh, search for truth. And I, I didn't write that aspect of the title, but it has been.
00:18:00The problem is not the problem. One issue is that we have for the past three years talked about this
00:18:05case around the world. It's an international story. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone thinks they
00:18:10know what's going on. And all of a sudden when a book comes out like this, that presents evidence
00:18:14of specific things, it generates, uh, clamor. I mean, really it's, uh, uh, it's, it's a great deal
00:18:23to process for this reason. There are very few books published in the last 20 years that build
00:18:30a story based on documents. The other books about this case, and I know of at least three other books
00:18:35about this case were pretty much based on interviews. They were based on, uh, you know,
00:18:40look at the town, what people knew in the public domain. This isn't that kind of book. This book
00:18:44looks very specifically at law enforcement documents and things that happened along the way.
00:18:50And, and I think, uh, the discussion, the discussion that that generates, I hope my belief
00:19:01leads to truth beyond what we know now is the truth of Brian Koberger community committed these
00:19:06crimes alone. And he's, uh, it's all wrapped up. If that's the truth, fantastic. We all want that to
00:19:13be the truth. If the truth is, as one or more other killers out there running around, in my opinion,
00:19:18as a journalist and as a former law enforcement official and FBI agent, who would not want to
00:19:23know that? If, if who wants to say, Oh, we did a great job. We got half the killers. If
00:19:28that's the
00:19:29case, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I think those questions, this conversation you and I are
00:19:33having right now are important in the American justice system. I think we all are so involved in
00:19:39this case for the past three years. How do we just stop and say, okay, we don't care about
00:19:44motive. We don't care about means. We don't care about mechanism. We don't care where the murder
00:19:48weapons are. We don't care about what we don't know. If this, if this had gone to trial, this book
00:19:53would not exist. Nobody would have any interest. We'd know the answers to these when it did not go to
00:19:59trial. In my opinion, um, we could not let this be buried and go away. These questions are compelling.
00:20:06And I wanted to, I wanted to ask the question. No, I'm glad you've written this book because
00:20:12I always felt that it was abbreviated justice and the family certainly behaved like that. And I think
00:20:19for Madison and Kaylee and Zana and Ethan, that they deserve to have, you know, you know, we don't want
00:20:27to
00:20:27go into gory details, but they deserve to have what happened to them be imprinted on the consciousness
00:20:35of the nation so that we all understand that justice was done. Uh, Brian Kohlberger,
00:20:43there's so much evidence leading to him, the car, um, you know, and his writings.
00:20:49Sorry. The cell tower analysis. Yes. Yes. But as you say, there are a lot of mysterious
00:20:59gaps and, and on that, could it be that those gaps are just forensic mistakes?
00:21:07Um, I've got to say, I don't see a lot of forensic mistakes. I think the law enforcement investigation
00:21:14was comprehensive. It was, uh, extraordinarily well done for the most part, but there are always
00:21:21mistakes. But I think the viewers need to understand this in the criminal justice system,
00:21:26law enforcement does the investigation. They take all of the evidence gathered in the investigation
00:21:31and they hand it to the prosecution. In my case, the United States attorney's office and this
00:21:36assistant United States attorney, in this case, a local prosecutor who was,
00:21:39we all know it's Bill Thompson, right? Once the prosecutor, federal, state, or local gets the case,
00:21:45they shape it into what they can make a prosecution. So the police did this investigation. They gave it
00:21:51to the prosecutor. They indicted Brian Kohlberger. They arrested Brian Kohlberger and they were going
00:21:57to try Brian Kohlberger until he changes his plea. So there's a big break. What the police investigate,
00:22:02what the prosecution make of it and what a jury decides to do are all components of the American
00:22:09justice system. But each of them has their own problems along the way, right? So you have this,
00:22:14this case in particular, and I say, look, I have four kids of my own. I worked, I worked murder
00:22:20investigations, even though it's very unusual to have that in the federal system. I testified in court in
00:22:26a trial of a serial killer named Oscar Ray Baldwin, who was executed. And I don't think I've ever told
00:22:31anybody this before. And I was a victim in a, in a case where a man went to prison for
00:22:37assault with
00:22:37a deadly weapon. And I testified in that, in that trial also. So I have been on every side of
00:22:44this.
00:22:44Uh, and I've looked from a media side in, in my opinion, and it's just my opinion, the justice system
00:22:52requires inquiry. We're all potential jurors. We're all investigative in a certain sense. In this case,
00:23:00one of the most sensationalized cases, the whole world is look at this print journalists, uh, media
00:23:05from all different angles. Um, and, and when he pled guilty, that all went away. Nobody ever got those
00:23:12answers. And that's what I was trying to do here. Provide some. I think it's a service because when
00:23:17there's a vacuum of information as there is in this case, and in so many others, uh, conspiracy
00:23:23theories jump in or wild theories, you know, people's imaginations run riot. And, you know,
00:23:29with the preponderance of sort of true crime podcasts and true crime, uh, books and stories, um,
00:23:36that that's a business now to in sort of inflame those theories. And what you've done
00:23:41is just some very somber, sober, uh, uh, you know, clinical, and from your law enforcement
00:23:49background, look at the actual evidence. Um, I've got one more question about the evidence,
00:23:57but, and I want to go on to other things about your, um, career in the FBI, but I also
00:24:03something
00:24:04that comes from my Australian, uh, background. Um, I'm a dual national, so I understand both America
00:24:11and Australian system, but as a police reporter in Australia, there was a system there called a
00:24:18coronial inquest, which used to exist in America and still does exist in a couple of states, but
00:24:24it's really seen as a, an antiquated, obsolete vestige of sort of British law. But the, the beautiful
00:24:31thing about a coronial inquest is that it is an independent investigation of the facts of a murder.
00:24:39Um, and you have a judge and you have police coming in and, um, you know, everybody coming
00:24:48in with their evidence, families, witnesses, and so on. And the judge makes a determination of whether
00:24:55this should go to the prosecutors or whether this should be, it's sometimes they open up cases that
00:25:00have been closed, homicide cases, and then those cases get opened again and someone's found guilty.
00:25:07All it does really in the end is it's there to tell the public, this is a terrible murder. This
00:25:14is
00:25:14what happened. This is the preponderance of the evidence. It's all there for you to see. And then
00:25:20the criminal justice system can take over. What do you think of that idea, bringing that back? Because,
00:25:28you, you know, we do have these crazy, whether it be JFK, Charlie Kirk, you name it, um, big,
00:25:37high profile murders, Nancy Guthrie, et cetera. They just end and, and it's a mystery and no one ever
00:25:44explains what happened.
00:25:46First of all, I think that's a brilliant perspective. I agree wholeheartedly. And I
00:25:52say, look at what the cases that you've just brought up, Epstein suicide, Charlie Kirk, you
00:25:58look at Trump's first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, you can go down a long list.
00:26:04When we move past those, they are sealed shut. And, uh, in the world, certainly America,
00:26:11but the world asks those questions. There is a difference between a criminal investigation
00:26:15leading to prosecution and an in-depth look at all of those facts. Like you talk about the inquest
00:26:22that you talk about, they are very different methods. It's very different when there's a time
00:26:27imposed on a, on a killer of four young human beings running around the community, the timeline,
00:26:33the political pressure, the media pressure, this pressure cooker that descended upon Moscow,
00:26:38Idaho to solve this crime expeditiously. There's a difference between that and going back after
00:26:43the fact, as I've attempted to do here and look at facts in ways that people have not seen them
00:26:50with the background and the experience, at least to, to know what to ask for questions.
00:26:55My biggest problem, um, with this whole thing is what I'm baffled at why people don't ask questions.
00:27:03And when they do, they, they're not the questions they should ask.
00:27:06If we could do this inquest, like you're talking about, um, I think it would be a huge move forward
00:27:13collectively as a culture, right? Where we could look at these questions in a measured,
00:27:19non-time sensitive, very logical procedural way and see what's missing because arrested,
00:27:27not arrested judgment. I don't mean that Brian Cobra pled guilty. I'm not disputing that,
00:27:31but in a, in a rush to protect the community because they didn't know they, they had a killer
00:27:36of four young people that could have been running around killing more people in the community.
00:27:39Look, they did a great job finding him. Yeah.
00:27:42It was, it was so, so compelling and, and so immediate. But now looking back,
00:27:50why is the culture as a, as a society, as a human beings, do we not want to go back
00:27:55and figure out some
00:27:55of these really, really perplexing, uh, questions? And, and that's what I've attempted to do here.
00:28:02No conclusions. I say you, Miranda, you, the reader, you, the viewer right now. Um,
00:28:08let's look to, let's look at this and see what we can find. Let's look at this and see what
00:28:12makes
00:28:12sense and what doesn't. Yeah. It's important. There was just one other piece of evidence that
00:28:17I forgot to ask you about, which was intriguing from the book, uh, that jumped out, which was that,
00:28:23uh, in the hallways, you mentioned that there was a lot of blood, um, and, uh, some of the blood
00:28:31the investigators found had been diluted with a foreign substance and you drew a conclusion from that.
00:28:39Well, I, I suppose I suggested a conclusion. I, I, I have no opinions, theories, whatever it,
00:28:44but, uh, you know, I think this one's hard to, hard not to discuss further. The crime scene within
00:28:50the bedroom on the third floor looked quite typical for something this horrific, what one
00:28:55might explore, you know, we've all watched the shows and the movies and everything. The bedroom
00:28:58on the second floor looked very much the same, the mechanism of the crime, the evidence of the crime,
00:29:03blood spatter, things like that. The space between from the third floor bedroom, down the stairs,
00:29:08across the living room, down the hallway into that bedroom looks very different. There is blood, uh,
00:29:13spatter all over the place, but the prosecution's own analyst determined that blood was quote unquote,
00:29:20quote unquote, diluted with an unknown substance, never identified. If that's the case, what diluted
00:29:26that blood? And we're talking about walls. We're talking about base forage. We're talking about
00:29:31floors. We're talking about a beer pong table. How did that get diluted? And why was it not the same
00:29:37in either of the two bedrooms? It looks, uh, and analyzed very, very differently. How did that happen?
00:29:43How long did it take to happen? And how does that fit within what we know of the rest of
00:29:47the house?
00:29:48And that is a big, big, big question. If you ask me.
00:29:52And do the photographs show that someone's tried to scrub it off?
00:29:56I wouldn't say the photographs show the photograph show that it is anomalous. There's no question about
00:30:02it. When blood, not to be too descriptive, but when blood is shed on a surface, on a flat surface,
00:30:08it has an impact, and then it drifts down because it has mass, gravity interacts on it,
00:30:13and it drifts down. When it does, it becomes less and less, you know, part of it is left on
00:30:17the wall,
00:30:18and it drifts until the, the gravity of what remains of that blood sample runs out of steam,
00:30:23essentially, right? But when it dries, you still have edges where, where it drip down the wall,
00:30:29and you still have a component at the end, what's left of the drop, which, uh, no longer is pulled
00:30:35by gravity, because the adhesion to the walls, you know, getting into the physics, but, um, it's
00:30:40pretty simple, and it's, it is the, it is the basis for forensic examination of a crime scene,
00:30:45and this is not a new science. I mean, people know what they're talking about, and they can find
00:30:51direction of stain, which way it goes. You can determine many, many, many things from it.
00:30:56What you don't have in this particular case, in those common areas, are the characteristics you
00:31:01would expect of blood spatter. So, if that's the case, why are they different? And if they are
00:31:07different, and you found out what, you know, that they were somehow diluted, or that they were washed
00:31:12off the walls, or whatever the case may be, the next question is, who did it, why, and when did
00:31:19they
00:31:19have time to do that in less than four minutes? They're compelling questions, and I, that's, that is
00:31:23a, a fairly important part of the book. Is it possible that it could have been, um, one of the
00:31:30investigators who prematurely cleaned it, or a, a, a, a roommate who was innocently cleaning
00:31:38it because they didn't realize what had happened? Um, you know, I think we can, we can...
00:31:43They had a big party the night before, and... Yeah, they had a big party Friday night. This
00:31:46obviously was after that. I don't know. The answer is I don't know. Do I think there's strongly
00:31:51compelling evidence, visually and chemically treated, you know, the forensic evidence from the, from the,
00:31:56from the law enforcement investigation, and, uh, and what the prosecution had going into trial,
00:32:02their report, uh, I think there's compelling evidence that somebody cleaned up, altered the
00:32:08crime scene, because I don't know any other way to explain that amount of blood over that large, an
00:32:14area, uh, just mysteriously being diluted with an unknown substance. And, and why would there have
00:32:21been splatter there in the hallway? No one was killed in the hallway. The obvious, the forensically
00:32:28obvious explanation would be that somebody cast the blood off from Maddie Mogan and, and, uh,
00:32:38Kelly Ginkoff was on the third, on the third floor. We know unequivocally that blood was transferred
00:32:42to the second floor and that they were not on the, based on the prosecution's narrative that they were
00:32:48never on the second floor. So the question is, how did their blood get to the second floor? And when
00:32:52it got to the second floor, why does it look so dramatically different than the blood on the third
00:32:56floor? And why was it not found in the second floor bedroom? They're really, really compelling,
00:33:03very, very significant questions that come out of the prosecution's own report. And these things were
00:33:09never asked. They were never explained. They were never, nobody even knew these things because it did
00:33:15not go to trial. But again, this is, you know, there are also issues with the white car. There
00:33:20are also issues with the cell tower analysis. Many, there's huge, huge issues. Everybody in this case
00:33:26thinks Brian Koberger's DNA was found on the knife sheath. There are huge problems with that too. And
00:33:33those are all outlined in the book. Like I say, uh, it's 430 pages. We don't have to go into
00:33:37all of it.
00:33:38I will say unequivocally, if you read this book and you get to the end and you think you knew
00:33:43about this
00:33:43case beforehand, I would be more than surprised, Miranda, more than surprised.
00:33:48Yeah, I agree. And do you think anything will come out of this? Do you think that there will be
00:33:54any investigations opened? I don't know. I don't know what investigation
00:33:59there could be because Brian Koberger's plea is pretty airtight. I mean, I don't know this. I'm not
00:34:06an attorney, but I don't see that this book or anything else's grounds to go back and say,
00:34:10hey, did you lie about, about this? You know, he pled guilty of his own volition.
00:34:14But to find an accomplice potential. That's the question. That's the question. Is it okay to say
00:34:21we find compelling evidence of another, another offender? And listen, law enforcement has said,
00:34:26they're saying today because talking about it, they say they found no evidence of another offender.
00:34:31I will disagree with that. I think it's very, very difficult to understand many aspects of this
00:34:36crime with one person. For example, Ethan, a six foot four, 228 pound, vibrant, vivacious young man,
00:34:44was killed in bed about three or four feet away from his girlfriend who fought valiantly for her life
00:34:49on the floor. It's very difficult for me to understand the mechanics, the process where somebody
00:34:56would need to believe that one person could kill them simultaneously. I mean, Ethan Chapin was a stout,
00:35:03capable, uh, athletic young man and a large one at that. Um, there, there are so many,
00:35:09so many questions like this in this book.
00:35:11Cole Berger had done his homework on who was in the house. So presumably he would go
00:35:17and kill Ethan first while he was asleep, sneak in. He could have just slit his throat,
00:35:22uh, before he had a chance to even wake up.
00:35:25Well, he didn't do that. The evidence of, of crime or the wounds that he suffered
00:35:29prior to death were significant. It would have been, uh, he, yeah, it, that's, that's not the
00:35:36crime. There are other things like his, when police found his body, for example, um, without
00:35:41getting into the entire book, but when police found his body, he had injuries to his extremities,
00:35:47his arms and legs that would have been visible and quite apparent from a long distance away.
00:35:51There were significant wounds, right? When police arrived and we see this on
00:35:55Officer Nunez body camera, you can see he's covered with two blankets. His torso is covered with two
00:36:01blankets. His lower legs were not covered because it had no wounds and his, uh, his neck and head
00:36:07were in the corner, but the, the rest of his body was covered with blankets, even though all of those
00:36:13wounds were inflicted under the blankets, meaning somebody had to have covered his body after he was
00:36:19dead. So what does that say about a killer? What does that say about the crime scene? What does that
00:36:24say about questions that have never been brought up, never been, uh, even, even examined? Uh, there
00:36:31are so many, I mean, you know, 430 pages of various questions we've hit on what five or six of
00:36:37them,
00:36:38maybe. Um, but there are so many of them. And, uh, all of these now we look at and say,
00:36:44why, how, when, where, uh, in my estimation, in my opinion, they're compelling questions.
00:36:53So let's go back just to your childhood upbringing and, and then your entry into the FBI as a member
00:37:01of
00:37:01the hostage rescue team. Um, tell us a bit about where you grew up and you were, you were a
00:37:07big
00:37:07skier and outdoorsman. Yeah. I've lived a very, very unusual life, a very unusual life. And it
00:37:13would take a long time to go through it. But I, I grew up at a ski area in Northern
00:37:17New Hampshire,
00:37:18Franconia. My dad ran a ski area. I was a ski racer. I lived an outdoor life at a time
00:37:23when,
00:37:23when I was a kid, we played with gun, it was sticks. And yeah, I mean, look, we didn't have
00:37:28anything.
00:37:28We had one television station. I mean, people will think this is impossible, but it was,
00:37:32it was primitive, but it built independence and a lot of skills that helped me later in life.
00:37:37And then I went away to, uh, I don't know what the entire process. I went to college.
00:37:41I, uh, I went to LA to be a rock star. I like playing music that didn't work well. However,
00:37:48when I was a kid, I didn't want to be an FBI agent. I didn't want to be a fry
00:37:51cook or a brain surgeon.
00:37:52I wanted to write books. I, I, from an early, my earliest age, I wanted to be a writer,
00:37:57which was a thing in those days. You could make, you could be a writer as a, you know,
00:38:01a thing. And, uh, so I wrote for orange coast magazine from there. I went and taught English
00:38:06for a couple of years. Then I was a newspaper reporter. I covered the police beat and I covered
00:38:10politics ultimately for daily news, two different newspapers. I went, I got hired by a congressman.
00:38:16I went to Washington DC and, and wrote speeches on Capitol Hill for the ranking member of the
00:38:21Appropriations Committee. Miranda, I used to go down every Thursday afternoon. I'd get my boss's
00:38:27red GTO convertible, drive down Pennsylvania Avenue, turn left and go into the oval office,
00:38:33oval office, uh, for meetings with Ronald Reagan. Fantastic. Is that right? Wow.
00:38:38It was fabulous for a kid my age. It was, it was a truly remarkable experience. The state of the
00:38:43union,
00:38:43um, all of those things were fabulous. Somehow I ended up in the FBI.
00:38:49Hang on somehow. That's a pretty big segue. Why? Well, because I don't have any easy stories. I
00:38:54was, I was fighting golden gloves. I was a boxer and I was fighting, uh, in this gym,
00:39:00Finley's boxing gym, a very, very famous boxing gym. And I got knocked out and I went home and you,
00:39:06you know, you get knocked out, you get a bit of a concussion and it was an envelope from the
00:39:10FBI.
00:39:11And I said to my wife, what in the world does the FBI want with me? You know, I was
00:39:14a good guy,
00:39:15uh, you know, no problems. And it was an app. She had sent away for the application. She thought
00:39:20maybe I'd want to be in the FBI. And then somehow I got in and I went to the FBI,
00:39:25went to the, uh,
00:39:26worked violent crime investigations for four and a half, five years. And then the FBI has a team
00:39:31called the hostage rescue team, which is a counterterrorism component. They have a selection
00:39:35once a year. I tried out and I made it. So I went there.
00:39:39What did you, what qualities did you need to have to join that?
00:39:43Zero. I was an English major. I was a wordsmith.
00:39:47But you had to be fit, didn't you? Fit and...
00:39:50I was athletic and I was a good shot. But you know, uh, this is another story entirely,
00:39:56but the U S government has three, what are now known as, well, many, many people refer to them
00:40:01as tier one. And there are many tier one groups nowadays. Back then, and I'm talking about 1991,
00:40:06one, right? 10 years before nine 11, the U S government had three elements of that kind.
00:40:13They had seal team six, the people that got bin Laden. They had Delta now called
00:40:17combat applications group or whatever. And these groups are very widely known now because of movies
00:40:22like, um, so many movies. Um, but they, but the U S government, because of a law called the
00:40:27posse comitatus, which prevented the civilian law enforcement from being used in, in military,
00:40:33or the military from being used in civilian law enforcement, they had to create a separate team
00:40:38that had arrest authority, what's called 1811 authority. So they decided to put it in the FBI.
00:40:44So, because the FBI had helped Delta force form Delta helped HRT. And now we had a component
00:40:50that had the same helicopters, the same guns, the same training. Um, but it was on the civilian side.
00:40:56And that was the team that I joined. So the president then was Bush. Yeah. Um,
00:41:02when I first started Reagan, uh, yeah, I guess it was, it would have been Bush. Yeah. It would
00:41:07have been Bush at the time. Right. Bush, the elder. And, and so you went through,
00:41:13I guess that whole period, um, nine 11, were you still there?
00:41:18Yeah, it was. And we shouldn't skip over one thing because, you know, when you do a black,
00:41:22a book like this, they hit you from every imaginable angle because we live in an age
00:41:26of hatred and easy communications. Right. So we all, uh, in America is a very famous
00:41:32debacle called Waco. Um, and not only was I, uh, a member of the hostage rescue team at Waco, but,
00:41:38uh, a guy named Tiller Russell, uh, made a, uh, a documentary called Waco American Apocalypse.
00:41:45So anybody that watches that documentary was huge on Netflix forever. I was the guy in that movie.
00:41:49He, he had four narratives. He had a, an FBI negotiator. He had an FBI sniper. That was me,
00:41:56the hostage rescue team. He had a branch Davidian, and then he had a, uh, a couple other people,
00:42:01a lawyer and a couple others. I was that guy.
00:42:03So you were the sniper at Waco who had, and you had David Koresh, who was the whack job who
00:42:11ended up
00:42:11blowing everyone up. You had him in your sights. Yeah. And I talk about it in that documentary. So
00:42:17anybody, you know, it's, it's crazy. These people go, oh, there's Whitcomb guy. He never did this.
00:42:22He never did. I've written two books, two entire memoirs about, about those years. And then I, uh,
00:42:29and I was in a documentary, but anyway, so I was that and, uh, and a couple of other controversial
00:42:34things, but. But go back to that. Cause I want to talk about that. And I also want to talk
00:42:38about
00:42:38Ruby Ridge and what that did to the FBI. You know, great question. It changed the FBI. It changed law
00:42:46enforcement. I, uh, I was at Ruby Ridge. I was one of the snipers at Ruby Ridge, all the Senate
00:42:52hearings, uh, the grand juries, all of that. I was one of those guys to be open about it.
00:42:57And then we went very shortly after that into, uh, Waco. They were very, very close in time.
00:43:03At that time, the United States government was mostly focused on domestic terrorism.
00:43:09When, when I started with this team, there were 66 foreign, uh, terrorist groups in the world.
00:43:15Uh, the Palestinian, uh, the PLO, uh, Red Brigades, uh, there was, there was so many,
00:43:22Al Qaeda was one of them, but there was a huge movement based on a book called the Turner Diaries
00:43:27in the United States, where there was a, of domestic terrorism interest that was really,
00:43:32really profound at the time. And out of that movement came Ruby Ridge and came Waco.
00:43:38Ruby Ridge was started by the United States. The first agency involved, involved the U.S.
00:43:44Marshal Service, not the FBI. Waco was ATF, not the FBI, but there was no backstop in America
00:43:52at that time or today beyond my team, the hostage rescue team. If everything goes bad,
00:43:59there was nobody else that's hit. I mean, you're, you're bringing in, you know, the 82nd airborne,
00:44:04right? Which you can't do under the posse comitatus. So both of those things were a different response.
00:44:10After those, the hearings and everything else, the United States government came back and said,
00:44:14look, no more, we've got to, we've got to figure out a different plan. The FBI created the critical
00:44:18incident response group, which now houses the hostage rescue team, the profilers or the behavioral
00:44:25assessment unit, the behavioral analysis unit, and the negotiators and various others. So it changed
00:44:32the way law enforcement approached crises. And for better or worse, I'm, I'm a testament to that
00:44:40time. I, you know, I've lived through and, and I wrote extensively. I wrote the better part of a
00:44:44book about Ruby Ridge and Waco. I was in the Waco documentary. And then I put out another memoir in
00:44:51August called anonymous mail. I'm about those two. So I've been very, very, very vocal. And I've tried to
00:44:57talk, I tried to give a first person account of historical, of those events. Um, so yes, I was
00:45:03involved in both of those. Ruby Ridge and Waco, both of them. Um, I think they are really the origins
00:45:12of a
00:45:12lot of the mistrust of federal government, a lot of the division, uh, in this country, which I think was
00:45:19exacerbated, uh, under the Biden administration, uh, when they sort of made up a domestic terror threat,
00:45:28which was Catholics at school board meetings and so on. And that all echoed for a lot of
00:45:35conservatives, what happened, uh, starting out at, at Ruby Ridge. Can you just take us back to that?
00:45:42Because my understanding of it, just from what I've read, um, I've never written about it, but from what
00:45:49I've read, from what I've, you know, watched as much as I can about it, it seemed like real overkill.
00:45:56Here was a guy that was sort of coerced. He was a, uh, you know, a kind of survivalist,
00:46:03wanted to go and live on his own with his wife and kids, or a pregnant wife. Um, and in
00:46:09the,
00:46:09woods, mining his own business. And he sort of got tricked into building a rifle that was against
00:46:17the law. Is that right? And then from then it escalated. Someone shot his kid's dog. Someone
00:46:23shot his kid. You know, in general terms, I think you hit it right on the head. The,
00:46:27the rifle was a shotgun. It was a long gun and it was altered because the barrel was sawed off.
00:46:31It looks now in retrospect, even court cases, he won a large judgment against the United States
00:46:36government. It looks like it was put together. Uh, people would call it entrapment or however you
00:46:41want to look at it, but it was a very, very small, uh, government action against the guy that just
00:46:47wanted to live upon on a mountain by all intents and purposes, separate from the U S government.
00:46:52But it was a very big thing at the time because that type of a movement was a focus of
00:46:58law enforcement.
00:46:59It was day to day conversation in American society. So I remember, I mean,
00:47:03how was that? I mean, do you think that was again, like what Biden was sort of bodging up as,
00:47:09I don't know what distraction or an attack on conservatives to paint them as if they are
00:47:15dangerous nuts? I'll tell you what I think the narrative is and what the, the human element of
00:47:21this is in, I've, I've been involved in so many of these in my lifetime. I mean, we won't even
00:47:28get
00:47:28started, but Afghanistan, Yemen, uh, Iraq, Somalia, East Timor. My life has been, you know, a lot of,
00:47:36a lot of conflict in, in difficult, in difficult situations, but there's always the difference
00:47:40between what ends up on the news and what it's like to be there. So if we want to talk
00:47:44about Ruby
00:47:44Ridge, I'll talk about it this way. It was a Friday afternoon. We were eating pizza or, you know,
00:47:50a weekday afternoon. It was the end of the day. We're eating pizza. Somebody comes back and says,
00:47:54hey, something happened in Idaho. We're not sure what it is, but, uh, we're going to fly out there
00:47:58and they might need us, right? This team. So we've got these cages in the back with all of our
00:48:03gear.
00:48:03So we have desert gear, we have water gear, we have Arctic gear. We, you know, it's anywhere in
00:48:08the world, anytime. And where are you headquartered? Quantico, Virginia. Quantico,
00:48:12Quantico, Virginia. We had a military air transport. So we take our helicopters and we put them on a plane.
00:48:18We jump on a plane and we fly to, I can't remember, maybe Spokane, Washington,
00:48:22and we drive all night and we get up, you know, get there. And this is literally what it was
00:48:28like
00:48:28as we, as we build the truth about these stories. There was no internet, there was no DVDs. I mean,
00:48:35I think it was VHS or whatever, but we get there and we show up at this armory having worked
00:48:40all day,
00:48:41fly all night, drive out there. Now we have a briefing and they say, we don't know what's going on.
00:48:46This is the FBI briefing. We say, we have a United States Marshal, um, was shot, Bill Deegan,
00:48:53and we, there was a gunfight on a mountain. Um, we don't know much more than that. Um,
00:48:59go get him. Literally. I'm not even kidding. I mean, it was very much that simple. So we take
00:49:04all our gear and it's a lot.
00:49:06So you didn't know it was a little boy or a dog. You didn't know any of that.
00:49:09Zero. Nobody knew it was, nobody knew Sammy had been killed until days into this thing. Nobody
00:49:15knew anything because it's on top of a mountain. There's no security. There's no internet. There's
00:49:21no cell phones. There's no way to communicate with anybody. So I remember I gearing up at a ghillie
00:49:27suit and we climbed up a mountain. It was 33 degrees. You know, it was just, it wasn't snowing,
00:49:33but it was just above rain. We didn't know where they were. All we knew is there was a gunfight
00:49:37between a Marshal had been shot and, uh, very, very little information. And we went up,
00:49:45set up and then it all happened. So there was a, we now know looking in retrospect
00:49:50at all of these things went wrong and they did, they did go wrong. And I've lived with it my
00:49:56entire
00:49:56life looking at it retrospectively, but the reality of what it's like to be you and me talking
00:50:02and living our lives, it looks very different when you're in it. You don't get, you know,
00:50:07you don't say, well, what is this person going to think about it? What's this going to look like
00:50:1020 years down the line? You look and say, this is what I need to do in this immediate moment
00:50:15and, and, and go with those actions. Looking back now at the way we view the FBI. And so do
00:50:21I,
00:50:22I mean, things have changed. Looking back now, does it look dramatically different? Yes.
00:50:26Did it, did I write about this in great detail in a book called cold zero? Did I write about
00:50:32it
00:50:32contemporaneous with those events? I did that as well. So I can go back now and look at those things
00:50:37as a historical record, not a hysterical record. Like we have so many in this society today. Right.
00:50:44And, uh, so it's, you know, Miranda, it's, it's interesting. I, I've lived such an, such a, a wild
00:50:50life. I never thought either of these events that we would be talking about them 30 years later,
00:50:56not my wildest imagination. Did I think these would become archetypal stories in American history,
00:51:03but they have because of mistakes and we have to learn from them.
00:51:06Well, because also they give you an insight into federal government overreach and particularly
00:51:15when it comes to the FBI against American sovereign citizens, you know, who are exercising their rights,
00:51:24um, to go and whatever they're doing, you know, hide out and be, be independent of society.
00:51:32Look, I went through the last, as a private citizen, uh, I went through the tumult, I will
00:51:38say of the last two years, right? The year leading up to the president, presidential elections and what
00:51:43we're going through now with Comey. I never, I was not in the FBI when Comey was director,
00:51:48but other directors and have been through this Mueller and various, you know, directors over, over time.
00:51:54And I look at how organizations have changed. The FBI changed fundamentally on 9 11.
00:51:59It became much more an intelligence agency than a criminal investigative agency. They handed a lot
00:52:04of things, uh, jurisdictions over to other federal agencies, the marshals, ATF, secret service,
00:52:09treasury department, things like that. And the FBI today, just for example, just as an example,
00:52:15politics aside, I remember watching the raid on Mar-a-Lago and wondering and, and looking down and
00:52:21seeing people I knew and worked with carrying automatic weapons, standing outside and thinking
00:52:28to myself, wait a minute, the FBI is raiding the property owned by the former president of the
00:52:34United States. It doesn't matter if it's Biden or Obama or Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan,
00:52:39the president of the United States is an institution constitutionally that we believe in.
00:52:45And I thought to myself, I would never, ever have anticipated that having been in the Oval
00:52:53Office with Ronald Reagan. Uh, I actually ate jelly beans, you know, he's known for his jelly
00:52:58beans, actually ate jelly beans out of the bowl. So, um, I swore an oath on the constitution
00:53:06to protect the constitution United States at the risk of my own life. And that has happened
00:53:12plenty of times. Um, I embrace first amendment conversations about all of these things,
00:53:19because if you can't confront the truth, if you can't look at it and meaning meaningful and almost
00:53:25always painful ways, it's not easy to go back and look at these things and say, I was part of
00:53:30this.
00:53:31I was part of that. And oh, it's okay. I've never said that. If we can't look at those things
00:53:36in terms,
00:53:38we'll never grow. And I'm not sure we're growing right now. I think, uh, it's very difficult times.
00:53:44And it's not fair to, I mean, it's not you, as you say, like you're at your, you and your
00:53:52team,
00:53:52say take Ruby Ridge. I mean, you are highly trained, uh, outfit, uh, and you go and you get put
00:53:59into a
00:54:00place. You're, you're a tool to do a job. And that's what you do. It's not your role to figure
00:54:06out the why's or you, there's no time to do that. That's not your skillset. But what the mistake
00:54:13there to me was complete overkill, having a military transport, taking you, these highly skilled killers,
00:54:22uh, you know, warriors, uh, counter into counter-terrorism, uh, experts and putting them
00:54:29on a hillside and just with no mission, just saying, go search and destroy and not giving
00:54:37you the full brief of what happened. And someone must have known in the marshals, they knew what
00:54:43had happened by then. Why did, yeah. And who was so gung ho? I mean, was it the FBI director?
00:54:50Was there political pressure? Can we take one of these at a time? Because I love,
00:54:55I love your curiosity and I love the frank questions because somebody needs to ask these
00:55:00questions going back, but there are frank answers and granted to my perspective, but I would say this,
00:55:05Nietzsche wrote, uh, men who fight monsters have to be careful that they don't become monsters
00:55:10themselves, right? So here's what happens. I'm an English teacher. I'm a speechwriter. I'm a poet. I was
00:55:17literally thought I was going to be a Shakespearean, uh, theater director. That was my major. I was a
00:55:23Shakespearean scholar, Shakespeare scholar, right? So somehow this guy ends up with a rifle with a
00:55:27scope on it on a mountaintop in Ruby Ridge. Nobody is going to convince me that I was a robot
00:55:33for the
00:55:34machine. No, I, I was a free thinking, well-educated. Uh, I wanted to be holding Caulfield,
00:55:42catching the kids coming off the cliff in the rye, right? I believed in that stuff. So you can, you
00:55:46just can't say, was I highly trained killer? Oh, hell yes, I was. And is that, is that part of
00:55:53the
00:55:53process? Yes, it is. And here's the reason why. If you, God forbid, Miranda, whatever city I'm
00:55:58looking at behind you, if you end up in one of those buildings and people have taken you hostage,
00:56:03somebody has to helicopter onto the roof. You've got to fat, you've got to repel down the side of the
00:56:07building. You've got to blow the windows out and you've got to go through that window at four
00:56:11o'clock in the morning. You got to kill the bad guys and save you. Somebody has to do that.
00:56:16And
00:56:17because of the laws of the United States, you can't use Delta force. So you have to have a team
00:56:21that does
00:56:21that. Is that the same team that's going to go around and, and, you know, talk about, uh,
00:56:27you know, uh, declined Latin verbs and, and explicate poetry and, and whatever else. In my case,
00:56:35yes. In my case, it was, I, the entire time I was on this job, I almost always kept a
00:56:40copy of
00:56:41Shakespeare's sonnets in my, in my kit, right? What guy is going to say that I'm admitting to
00:56:46you that now in a public forum and they'll go, what is this guy nuts? But the bottom line is,
00:56:50these are complex guys. This team I was on this team of supposed machines and robots and girls,
00:56:54two of them had PhDs. So, you know, it's not, it's not that these are robots. You've got to have
00:57:02a
00:57:02capability and it's... But also I, from my experience of, of, you know, reporting on guys like you,
00:57:11uh, whether it be SAS, you know, in Iraq, you are moral people. I mean, more so because you're a
00:57:18life and death, you are delivering it. And so always in, in my view, 99% are moral people and
00:57:26the psychopaths get weeded out or found out eventually. So I'm not, I'm not disparaging
00:57:33you. What I guess I'm saying is that as, as an entity, you are a tool and you are put
00:57:40in to
00:57:40administer justice to save people, whatever. And it's got to be lethal and precise, but you were
00:57:50given an impossible task because you didn't know who the enemy was.
00:57:54Are you talking about Ruby Ridge in particular?
00:57:55Ruby Ridge in particular. Well, I mean, all of them really, but in that one in particular,
00:58:00when you have bad leadership. Everyone's impossible.
00:58:02When you have bad leadership. Yeah. Well, you know, it's fascinating you talk about that. I'd
00:58:07love to talk to you sometime when we're not, you know, we don't have time constraints or whatever.
00:58:11So just finish the story with Ruby Ridge.
00:58:14Ruby Ridge for, for better or worse has been documented wildly. Um, just in what I wrote,
00:58:20I wrote parts of two books as recently as August of last year about them, but it's important for
00:58:25people to realize that there is a civil aspect of this where Randy Weaver sued the federal government
00:58:30and won millions of dollars for the wrongful death of his family members. So the system has spoken.
00:58:35Do I accept the responsibility, uh, delivered through the court system? Absolutely. There was a grand
00:58:41jury. There was a grand jury where one or more of the members of this team, um, had to face
00:58:48potential
00:58:48murder charges. There were Senate hearings. I remember very clearly standing with, uh, my,
00:58:54my teammates, um, in a, in a Senate, in a heart, uh, heart Senate office building, uh, these sworn hearings,
00:59:03where they, they actually brought the door to the cabin, um, where the fatal shot was fired. They
00:59:08brought that in. Um, there were search warrants. I mean, I was in the pregnant, the pregnant wife.
00:59:13Yes. Yes. Horrible. Yes. Yes. I mean, the whole thing was horrible. I mean, I was there. It was horrible.
00:59:19Um, but the, and what happened when, I mean, when the, the sniper took the shot,
00:59:24what happened is this, and I, I'm just explaining it for people, you know, whatever. I mean, this is
00:59:3030 years ago when, when you work in my trade, my chosen trade at the time, and everybody knows what
00:59:37a
00:59:38sniper is. And, but most people don't understand trajectory. When a bullet flies through the air,
00:59:45it has to go up and down like a football or a baseball. And I'm not using a sports metaphor.
00:59:49It's just the most obvious thing people understand is if you shoot, if you throw some,
00:59:54a projectile moving over a distance is a physics calculation of trajectory. Fair enough. A bullet
01:00:01is no different, smaller, it's faster, but it is the same physics principles. Okay. So the further away,
01:00:08the more difficult those physics principles are to hit a target. And when you're doing that as a
01:00:12profession, you're looking through a scope and the scope is very narrow field of view.
01:00:16You can't see what's outside it. That day I was high above the house, looking at a downward
01:00:21trajectory. It was 33, 34 degrees, pouring rain, uh, freezing cold, soaking wet. We'd been up for 36
01:00:29hours hiking up a mountain. And all of a sudden they came running out of the house at us with
01:00:35weapons.
01:00:36And we had no clue what was going on. I thought they would, I mean, to this day,
01:00:40I thought they were running at me and there was going to be a gunfight, you know?
01:00:43And it was a militia.
01:00:45Yes. I thought it was a militia. It was actually three human beings living in a cabin. I don't
01:00:51even know why they ran out of the house. I don't think they saw us, but, um, all I want
01:00:56to explain
01:00:56is this, a shot was fired. The, this particular shot that was fired, you have to understand that
01:01:02you are looking through a scope and somebody, and you have to shoot them. So it's very much,
01:01:06and I have to use this metaphor and I'm sorry in a life of death situation, but in football,
01:01:11you see a receiver and a football and you run into each other at the same time. That's the idea.
01:01:15You're throwing a football at an empty space on the field, assuming that the speed and the pace
01:01:21of the person is going to lead to, to the catch, right? It is the exact same physics in, uh,
01:01:29the sniper
01:01:29trade. If you're shooting a moving target. So you have to shoot at something so that the person runs
01:01:35into it, a moving target. Does that make sense? In this particular case, that particular sniper
01:01:42knew where he was, the man with the gun was going, Randy Weaver, and he was running for the front
01:01:47door
01:01:47of the cabin. As he pulled the trigger, the door opened. And I mean, this is simultaneous. He's
01:01:52shooting from 300 yards away, pulls the trigger, the door opens because she was letting her husband
01:01:57into the house. He ran into the door. She stepped out the door, the door occluded the view and the
01:02:03bullet hit all at the same time. So was it an active man? Yes. Were there components in this
01:02:11that defy any explanation at all? Yes. And you put those together after 30 years, 32, 33 years,
01:02:19whatever it's been looking back. You can color that with the brush of any, any ideology, any
01:02:27perspective that you have being there. And I was there. It, it was, it was different. It was immediate.
01:02:35It was visceral. It was human. It was all things that get lost over time. So, and you guys knew
01:02:43straight away what had happened? No, absolutely not. We didn't, at that point, we didn't even know that
01:02:48Sammy had been killed. The son had been killed. When that happened, nobody knew anything. In fact,
01:02:54the command element down in a field down at the bottom of the mountain, nobody really knew anything.
01:02:59And because we didn't have gear, we had to, we had to expo, we had to go back down the
01:03:03mountain in
01:03:03the pitch black and we almost fell off a cliff that night also. And then the next day started trying
01:03:10to
01:03:10figure out what had happened. It was, it was chaos for, for quite a long period of time. And it's,
01:03:16I mean, you know, benefit of hindsight and everything. I still think that once you put
01:03:23people in that situation, anything can happen. And I think the mistake was going, it was just
01:03:31overkill. Whoever gave the orders, whether it was the FBI or the president or whoever it was who gave
01:03:39the orders to use a, you know, a mallet to knock on an acorn. You know, you bring up a
01:03:47really great
01:03:48point. And if we, I did not anticipate this conversation, but since you brought it up, no,
01:03:53no, I love it. It's, you know, there's no rules, but I think the number one thing that has survived
01:03:59over all of these years was the rules of engagement. Like why did we shoot under what circumstances? The FBI
01:04:05has one rule of engagement. An FBI agent shall not, shall not use deadly force unless their life
01:04:14or the life of another is in immediate jeopardy of death or serious bodily harm. So the FBI rules
01:04:21of engagement, if you, they, you graduate the academy, they give you a gun and a badge and they
01:04:25say, go get them. Right. They say, don't shoot ever, ever, unless you're going to die or somebody,
01:04:32an innocent person is going to die. Ruby Ridge survives because the rules of engagement were
01:04:36read differently. And I have them to this day. I have my original notes. Um, and I have the,
01:04:43the written rules of engagement that were given to us in a potato field and a pouring rain
01:04:47as we were about to go up that mountain. And they were different.
01:04:50How are they different?
01:04:51And that's the truth. I can't remember the exact wording, but it basically said,
01:04:56if somebody comes out of that cabin with a gun and you feel threatened, deadly force can be used.
01:05:01And it stands out to this day, 33 years later, 34, whatever it's been, it stands out to this day
01:05:06for this reason. I can't think of another time in FBI history when the rules of engagement were
01:05:12changed for a specific instance. And that's what people talk about to this, to this day where they
01:05:16changed. Yes. Did they impact me? No, because I understood fully that if I pulled a trigger and
01:05:23shoot somebody, I suffer the consequences. They tell you, they give you a gun when you join the FBI,
01:05:28they tell you how to use a gun. They tell you when you cannot use a gun, the rules of
01:05:32deadly force.
01:05:33They never, ever tell you what's going to happen if you do. I promise you.
01:05:40Let's just quickly go. I know it's another huge story, but Waco, your involvement in that. And then
01:05:46lastly, I wanted to ask you about what do you think's happened to the FBI? Why did it, in my
01:05:54view, lose its way? If you think that. And I think it's important. I know these are 30 years ago,
01:06:01but I do think that they still have echoes today and they were never resolved. And it sort of comes
01:06:07back to your book about the Idaho murders, that here you have, you know, a great tragedy in American
01:06:15life, you know, even just a tragedy in a small town for four families. And it's never really
01:06:23explained properly. And I think with Ruby Ridge and Waco, we just all moved on.
01:06:30I think to this day, I believe to this day, I'm the only person at Waco and Ruby Ridge
01:06:36that has written about them in a first person account that is detailed. And at least my first
01:06:42book was timely. I mean, that book came out five or six years or something like that after Ruby Ridge
01:06:46in Waco. Um, it was fresh in my mind. I had all the notes. I still had the clothes. I
01:06:50still was
01:06:51wearing, you know, I mean, it was, it was contemporaneous. Right. And then I wrote it again,
01:06:57uh, more about it and the, the impact it's had on me and light in society and things like that
01:07:02since
01:07:03then. Um, and I would say that no matter what I say here now, it would not be nearly as
01:07:08detailed as,
01:07:09as what I went through then. I talk about the, you know, the cost of everybody involved.
01:07:12Um, but I'll say this, uh, because in, in addressing your questions, I was an FBI agent
01:07:17for 15 years, 15 years. I've been out of the FBI for 25, right? So that was a long time
01:07:24ago.
01:07:24And my life has been expansive since then. I worked in the intelligence community. I've,
01:07:29I've, uh, started and built large businesses. Um, I've lived in foreign countries. I've lived in
01:07:35Asia for seven years. I've done many, many things. I've written for publications and worked in
01:07:40television, things like that. I've done a lot of things. So I'm looking back now,
01:07:43I have the perspective of an older guy, an old guy, right? I'm not even older anymore. I'm old,
01:07:48right? But I look back and I say, look, is it, what do I teach my kids? What do I
01:07:52talk about when
01:07:53I meet you? Like a very, very bright, introspective, uh, fascinating person to talk about with all of
01:08:02your own life experiences to talk about these things. I think I can look at them now with hindsight
01:08:07in a way that is, is growth. That's what we do as human beings. We should learn from our mistakes.
01:08:12We should gain wisdom based on experience. Uh, in my opinion, that's been my life. So I look back on
01:08:17these things and, and I know where you're going with the FBI today. I can't really comment about
01:08:23the FBI today because I'm not in the FBI today, but that said, I know that it's a very different
01:08:29organization for one primary reason. It was a lot. It was a law enforcement organization until 9 11
01:08:34at that time. And this is all very widely documented. I don't think anybody would argue
01:08:39with it. Robert Mueller changed the direction of the FBI because of 9 11 to move more toward
01:08:45being a domestic intelligence, uh, agency. The FBI always had an intelligence community,
01:08:51uh, an intelligence, um, aspect. Don't get me wrong, but it became more of that. And when that happened,
01:08:58it changed a lot of things. We moved to the, to the Patriot Act and we look at provisions,
01:09:02the fees accords and things like that. The complexion of an FBI agent's job,
01:09:07many FBI agents jobs changed. And then it became a continuum to what we're going to talk about now,
01:09:13which is, uh, allegations by the Trump administration and by the Biden administration
01:09:17going back and forth of what you can do with the justice department. And we got to remember the FBI
01:09:22works for the justice department, the justice department falls within the executive branch.
01:09:26And who's the head of the executive branch, the president of the United States,
01:09:28right. There's a direct lineage. It's unequivocal. And so we look now and say,
01:09:34what is going on? Right. We look and say, how did this change during the Biden administration
01:09:39coming out of COVID and where are we now? And it has been a profound change. Um, so we can
01:09:45talk
01:09:46about further questions, but has it changed? It has changed a lot. Yes.
01:09:50Mm. And so, so just going back to Waco. So you were the sniper, you had David Koresh
01:09:58in your gun sights before he blew up everyone. Um, what, what happened? Why did you not pull the
01:10:06trigger? Um, it's a great question. I, again, I talk about this in that documentary, uh, Waco American
01:10:12Apocalypse. I talk about it fairly bluntly, very bluntly. Um, I knew my job
01:10:20and, uh, a little framework. So everybody remembers that the branch of the compound,
01:10:25this huge, you know, building in the middle of the, of a cow field, there was a building
01:10:29in the front called Sierra one, which was a sniper team. And it was a building in the back
01:10:33called Sierra two, which is a sniper or a sniper position, two teams each. And I was in the back,
01:10:38Sierra two. And our job was to provide surveillance of the building. Like somebody comes to a window and
01:10:44we'd provide all that information via radio back to the command element. They would make the decisions
01:10:49based on the information we gave them. Right. And I was there for 57 days. I don't know. It's
01:10:55almost 60 days, almost two months. So it just becomes a job over and over again. Um, but one night
01:11:01at two, we would do two hours shifts on because you stare at a right through a rifle scope for
01:11:06two hours.
01:11:06And there's a, there are various issues. So you do a two hour shift that particular day,
01:11:11my shift was sometime in the middle of the morning, like two to four or something like that.
01:11:14And I remember I was watching from window. It was like a movie where you go, you see shot, shot,
01:11:20shot.
01:11:20Oh, wait a minute. Let's go back to this shot. It was very much like that.
01:11:24And you can see people moving around inside.
01:11:26Oh yes. Yeah. I mean, things that you wouldn't talk about. I'm not trying to
01:11:30sidetrack the story, but for example, there was this one guy that would come to a window every day.
01:11:34And there was this, he had a little kid in a little red puffy down jacket with blonde hair.
01:11:40And he would hold the kid up in the window and look out so they could see what was going
01:11:44on
01:11:44because they thought we wouldn't shoot a kid. I'm thinking, I'm not going to shoot you either.
01:11:49What an awful thing to say.
01:11:50It's awful, but that's a daily, that was a daily thing. You know, it was,
01:11:55it's complex talking about what it was like to be there and how it was, but there was this one
01:11:58moment
01:11:59that. And, uh, you know, it's, it was quiet. It was cold. There was fog. There was a little breeze.
01:12:06Um, I, I like jazz. So I was listening to Miles Davis. I had this little transit,
01:12:11like this little cassette deck and I'm lying, I'm sitting behind the sniper rifle
01:12:15and I'm listening to Miles Davis, Bitches Brew, that one particular song.
01:12:19And I'm looking in this window and I move on and I go, wait a minute. And I go back
01:12:23and it's him.
01:12:24Right. And he's standing in this window and I know he can see me. He's looking right at me.
01:12:29He couldn't see me, but he knew where I was and he knew I was out there. He didn't know
01:12:34me,
01:12:34obviously, or anything about me, but he knew what I was and he knew what I was there for.
01:12:39And we just had this very odd moment. That's so hard to explain unless you do that for a job
01:12:45where
01:12:47you, it was so intimate, Miranda, when I'm literally, it seems like you're, you know,
01:12:55right in his face and the glasses and the face that everybody's seen all this time. And I think to
01:13:00myself, if I shoot him now, everybody comes out. It's over. There's 86 people in that building.
01:13:07David Koresh dies. They're all going to come out. The kids are going to be fine. Everybody's going to
01:13:10be good. We're going to go home. It's over. Right. And, uh, but you can't do that in civilian law
01:13:15enforcement. If I had pulled the trigger, I probably would have gone to jail. I think it's,
01:13:20it's, it's most likely, but looking back on it now, you look back and say that, you know,
01:13:25this is the college philosophy, right? You're in, you're in an ethics class. And the professor asks
01:13:31you if you had the opportunity to kill one person and save 86 lives, would you do it?
01:13:38And I lived it. I mean, I made that decision. Uh, I made the right decision, but we were within
01:13:44the,
01:13:44the, your rules of engagement, of course. No, no, no, I could not have,
01:13:48you know, I could, I have made something up. Could I have said, he pointed a gun at me and
01:13:52whatever else, um, a human being could have made that decision. I think based on my training,
01:13:58the reasons I joined the FBI, what I, uh, you know, offered to sacrifice my life. I personally
01:14:04couldn't have made that decision because it was morally, ethically unsound in every man of every
01:14:09imaginable way, but we still have to look at the conversation. The conversation is if I could take
01:14:14that chance at my own sacrifice and save 86 people's lives, should I have done it? There's
01:14:20a lot of kids in there, Miranda suffered a horrific death. So those are the things that come
01:14:24with living this life with Ruby Ridge and Waco and a million other things that I've done in my life.
01:14:29And can we, you know, you talk about them in a tick tock, uh, comment on somebody's show,
01:14:34and it's easy to make assumptions when you do it and you're there over a long period of time.
01:14:40To me personally, it seems like, you know, it was a little bit different.
01:14:44Of course.
01:14:44But I just one quick anecdote, I just going to say this really quickly. So the Waco thing came up
01:14:49and I said, yeah, the guy that had David Koresh in the sites and this guy that I knew that
01:14:52was on the
01:14:53team, he called me up and said, Whitcomb, you blank. He said, we all had him in our sites. And
01:14:58I said,
01:14:59okay, I said, that was my experience. I don't know what yours was. That was my experience.
01:15:03So anyways. Yeah.
01:15:05And, and what, what sort of an impact did, I mean, those two incidents, but, but everything
01:15:10that you saw, um, in, you know, really like, I mean, it's like being in combat, but in your own
01:15:17country. Um, what impact did that have on you?
01:15:21I don't know the answer, except that I'm sitting here talking to you now and I'm writing books and
01:15:26I've moved on in life and I've done 50 things that you and I have not discussed that were far
01:15:32more
01:15:32perilous, far more perilous. I mean, I got stuck in the second best airport in Mogadishu, in south of
01:15:38Mogadishu, Somalia with no technical, no money and no passport. That was a bad day. But anyways,
01:15:44I think my point is that, you know, slipping into a conversation like with, like this with you is,
01:15:50is easy because it's, it's well thought it's insightful and it's measured with somebody who has life
01:15:57experiences. And as a thinker and a writer and, uh, your perspectives, it doesn't always translate.
01:16:03It's all, it's oftentimes somebody just saying, well, he's this, or he's that. And we're human
01:16:08beings. There's a human being behind all of these stories. And that led to this book, the human being
01:16:14behind this story. And at least I think of myself, uh, was in search of truth. I could have done
01:16:22a
01:16:22million things besides this book. There's no reason that I did this book. Do I wish I hadn't
01:16:27done this book? Oh, hell yes, I do. I wish I had not done this. Really? Yes. Because, because at
01:16:32this
01:16:32stage in my life, I have a great life. Why would I suddenly want to be a lightning rod for
01:16:38the 300
01:16:38different narratives that spinning out of control around this thing? Right. Um, I, I win in no way
01:16:45on this thing. I felt compelled that it was the right thing to do, but that, that's just my decision.
01:16:52I'm not saying people agree with me, but that's interesting. I understand why, because of the life
01:16:58you've lived, that it troubles you when there are, uh, you know, stories untold and unexplained
01:17:08that means something to people. And I do think that is corrosive to, um, our society in, in general,
01:17:16to have all these questions and these mysteries and that lead to suspicions. And that can also be,
01:17:23um, preyed upon by people wanting to make money or cause trouble or, uh, whatever,
01:17:30because there's a vacuum of real information. So, you know, you, you've been a witness for whatever
01:17:37reason to some pretty important historical events that really have led us to, I think,
01:17:45a lot of the division that we have today and the mistrust. Um, you just, you were a witness and
01:17:52you
01:17:52were part of those, but for some reason you have that knowledge. And so I think it's, I love that
01:18:00you
01:18:00are driven. You have a compulsion to satisfy that curiosity, because I think that's the most, um,
01:18:09that's the most logical, rational thing I think you could do.
01:18:13I appreciate that, Miranda. I really do. I, I'm not a gun. It's a side thing, but it's kind of
01:18:20a metaphor.
01:18:21I'm not a gun guy. I'm not a gun nut, but I carry a gun. And people say, well, why
01:18:25do you carry a gun? I mean,
01:18:26whatever. And I say, because if something happened in a violent society and I didn't have one, I would
01:18:32feel negligent. I would feel like I'm a force multiplier that I would make the right decision
01:18:37and that I should always be able to do the right thing. I should, I want to die Holden Caulfield,
01:18:42right? I want to die the catcher in the rye. I want to die feeling I've got a savior complex.
01:18:47Let's be honest. I got a savior complex. I can't cook. I, you know, maybe I don't have any emotions,
01:18:52but I want to save people. I always have my whole life. I've wanted to. And I look at what
01:18:57I do now
01:18:59and say, I hope that's what led to this book. I truly believe that's the case because I could write
01:19:06books about anything. I could play guitar with my band. I could do different things. I felt a personal
01:19:12conviction to tell this story for those reasons that you are the first human being that I've talked to
01:19:19ever that gave me an opportunity to fill in some of the, some of the background that goes into this.
01:19:25And I'm really, truly grateful. I didn't know you were going to do this. I didn't know what we're
01:19:29going to talk about, but I'm surprised and I'm truly grateful. Well, I'm glad, so glad that I had
01:19:35this opportunity to talk to you and I'd love to, you know, keep in touch and talk to you more.
01:19:40I think
01:19:40you, you, you just, you, you have so the keys to a lot that, um, that sort of troubles all
01:19:48of us,
01:19:48I think at the moment. And I'm troubled too. I mean, yeah, we also share this. We share it.
01:19:53I know. I think we all do. I think anyone who cares about this country and, you know,
01:19:57the future does, um, is troubled by something we can't quite understand, but I think you have some keys
01:20:03to understanding and, and I think the book is a service. So thank you and wonderful to talk to you.
01:20:10I so enjoyed it. So enjoyed it. Thanks so much for watching and listening today.
01:20:16Please subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes of Podforce One.
Comments

Recommended

  1. Bryan Kohberger Says He’s Innocent of Idaho Murders and Seeks to Take Back Guilty Plea
    People
    2 weeks ago
  2. Inside Bryan Kohberger's Childhood & Family Life: How Idaho Student Murderer May Have Come To Be
    Forbes Breaking News
    1 year ago
  3. Inside Idaho Murder Suspect's Alleged Chatroom Posts: I Can Do 'Whatever I Want with Little Remorse'
    People
    4 years ago
  4. Bryan Kohberger Said Victim's Name on Night of Idaho Murders, Surviving Roommate Told Police in Newly Unsealed Interview
    People
    1 year ago
  5. Bryan Kohberger Behind Bars: Peculiar Habits of Idaho Murderer Revealed by Inmate
    People
    1 year ago
  6. Robert Gilman: How the former US Marine was freed from Russian prison
    The Independent
    2 hours ago
  7. Watch: The Office star Lucy Davis rings cancer bell as she announces incurable diagnosis
    The Independent
    4 hours ago
  8. Why Matthias Jaissle changes everything for Newcastle
    The Independent
    5 hours ago
  9. American Woman Bikes Over 15,000 Miles From Europe to Africa
    People
    18 hours ago
  10. Grease Star Stockard Channing Reveals She’s Been Living as a ‘Recluse’ After Leaving the U.S. Following Her Partner’s Death
    People
    18 hours ago
  11. NYC couple finds stranger lounging in apartment
    New York Post
    7 hours ago
  12. Sparks fly from American Airlines jet engine after bird strike
    New York Post
    7 hours ago
  13. Aaron Boone is seeing the Yankees "making better contact" and hopes another comeback win can get the offense going in the right direction.
    New York Post
    8 hours ago
  14. Massive inferno engulfs home after deadly explosion
    New York Post
    9 hours ago
  15. Trump administration threatens LA homeless funding
    New York Post
    9 hours ago
  16. Bryan Kohberger Pleads Guilty, Confessing to Murders of 4 University of Idaho Students to Avoid Possible Execution
    People
    1 year ago
  17. University of Idaho Murder Suspect Waives Extradition, Will Be Transported to Idaho
    People
    4 years ago
  18. Bryan Kohberger Called His Mother After Idaho Murders — Once When He Got Home and Again While Driving Back to Crime Scene (Exclusive)
    People
    1 year ago
  19. Kohberger pleads guilty to murders of Idaho students, spared death penalty
    The Star
    1 year ago
  20. White House Offers Condolences For Families Testifying In Bryan Kohberger Murder Trial
    Forbes Breaking News
    1 year ago
  21. Bryan Kohberger Victims' Surviving Roommate Condemns 'Evil' Murderer At Sentencing Hearing
    Forbes Breaking News
    1 year ago
  22. PhD student turned killer: Idaho murderer gets 4 life sentences, offers no motive
    India Today
    1 year ago
  23. Bryan Kohberger 'Disfigured' Kaylee Goncalves' Face, Fled Murder Scene After 'Intense Struggle' with Xana Kernodle: Police
    People
    1 year ago
  24. What Would Bryan Kohberger's Defense Have Been Had He Gone To Trial_
    Forbes Breaking News
    1 year ago
  25. One Night in Idaho: The College Murders | show | 2025 | Official Trailer
    JustWatch
    1 year ago