Before Bryan Kohberger, the Internet Already Had Someone Else to Blame for the Murders

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
The cruelest thing the Internet did in this whole case landed on a man who had nothing to do with the murders. He dated Kayleigh Gonzalves for years by every account. He thought he was going to marry her. He called her the love of his life. And in the hours before she was murdered, she called him more than once. The Internet took those phone calls and turned them into a confession. They weren't a confession. He was cleared. But cleared never travels as far as the accusation. He's the clearest example of what those theories actually cost. So it's worth slowing down on him. His name got dragged for years. His aunt said half of America believed her nephew did it. He set up a little social media account for the dog that survived that house. And his real crime, the thing that put a target on him was that a grieving young woman reached out to her ex in the last hours of her life.
This is where the theories change shape. It's part three in our series looking at the Kohberger conspiracy theories. You know, the real Kohberger. Oh, it's over here. The real Kohberger. I should note, it's an actual screen. I'm still pointing at the wrong area. It's like, oh, I have a monitor over there. And so I get confused. Tony gets his directions mixed up.
We've covered so many so far. So if you haven't checked it all out yet, please go back and look at it. Just a few back here on the YouTube feed or podcast feed, wherever you're watching us. And do hit subscribe.
This is where the theories change shape. And the physical evidence won't bend. And the digital trail won't bend. The stories stop being about evidence and start being about people. People are softer targets. And as for this case, it gets ugly.
I encourage your thoughts in the comment section, wherever you're watching this. Substack and YouTube are probably the best for you. We started this series with the DNA that they swear was planted. Then the night they insist one man couldn't have survived. Now we're at the people. The ex-boyfriend, the internet convicted, the survivors they turned into suspects, the confession they say was coerced, and the motive that doesn't exist, which might be the hardest part of all.
Here's what those phone calls actually were. Kaylee had broken up with her boyfriend only weeks before, right before a plan to move to Texas for a job. And by her own family's account, she was second-guessing it. They said she worried she might never find another guy like him. They said she was looking for every excuse for him to pick up the phone. That's what the calls were. A young woman reaching backwards towards something safe on the edge of a big change. The long call, the repeated calls, all of it, police, they looked at him hard early because of those calls, and they cleared him. But they did look, they looked hard, and that's good.
Her only family stood beside him and said he had nothing to do with it because he didn't. Reaching for somebody you love is an evidence that they killed you. It's just heartbreaking in a way that has nothing to do with the crime. The other thing the doubters can't get past is the wait. The murders happened around 4 in the morning. The 911 call didn't go out until almost noon, roughly eight hours. On its face, that gap looks impossible to explain. There's an explanation and it isn't a cover up. One of the surviving roommates heard noises that night. She read them as ordinary, figured it was a roommate up playing with a dog or people still keyed up after a night out. She opened her door, she heard crying, and she saw a figure in black in a mask that covered the nose and the mouth. She walked past her towards the back sliding door. The affidavit described her standing in what it calls a frozen shock phase. She locked herself in her room. Later she made her way downstairs to the other roommate. That phrase frozen in shock isn't an excuse. It's a documented thing's brain do under sudden terror. The friends who got called to that house the next morning have explained the whole sequence out loud. Two young women 19 and 20 years old in a college town that hadn't seen a murder in years couldn't make what they'd have seen line up with reality. One of them thought she might have dreamed it. They didn't want to cover up. They froze. Then they couldn't believe it. Then they called for help.