He Admitted to Killing 4 Idaho Students. Now He Wants to Take It Back

SPEAKER_1 (0:08)

Lights Out.

Josh Thomas (0:13)

In the early morning hours of November 13th, 2022, the roommates living at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, returned home after a fun night out bar hopping and attending fraternity parties. They briefly caught up and watched Vampire Diaries before calling it a night. They were settling down between 3 and 4 AM when Dylan Mortenson was woken up by disturbing sounds coming from upstairs. The dog began barking ferociously in a panic, and she heard someone walk upstairs before a voice rang out, someone's here.

After that, she heard the haunting cries of one of the female roommates somewhere in the three-story house. An unknown male voice tried to soothe the crying person, but the sound stopped after that. Dylan creaked her door open twice, calling out her roommate's names, but was met with silence. Fellow college students came and went through this house all the time, but this was different. This person was unwelcome. For a third time, she opened the door and saw something that nearly made her heart stop. A man dressed in black, a mask pulled over his face, and a long object she couldn't make out crossed in his hand.

Welcome back to Lights Out. I'm your host, Josh.

Ian (1:29)

I'm Ian.

Josh Thomas (1:30)

And I'm Daniel. Today, we're going to be taking a look at one of the most notorious cases I think in recent American history, one that took this small town by storm and really the entire world.

Ian (1:44)

I think this case was probably my introduction to Kendall because my ex was a big fan and this was the first time I watched a Kendall Ray video was her coverage of the Idaho 4

Josh Thomas (1:55)

Yeah, she covered this pretty shortly after it happened. And for me personally, I kind of never really fully dove into it and understood the case on a deep level, you know, sort of the ins and outs and what exactly happened as far as really the details go. I kind of heard bits and pieces of it and on my other show, Mile Higher, we had Bryan Enten from News Nation, the correspondent that was there pretty much the next day after this happened until Bryan Kohberger was finally arrested. So I kind of learned a little bit more through him and his experience, but I had never really gone, you know, completely into this and really learned about the victims for one and their stories and you know, their lives before this fateful night. But I also didn't fully understand just what an absolute psychopath, Bryan Kohberger is. I mean, it's just, he's on a completely different level of serial killer.

And so I've been kind of waiting to see, you know, as things develop. And I mean, this case has been ongoing pretty much since 2022 And I've kind of hesitated to cover it on Lights Out for a couple of different reasons. For one, I kind of knew that things were going to continue to come out. And, you know, then the episode would be sort of out of date real quickly. So I kind of wanted to wait a few years and just sort of see how everything played out. And I think now things are, you know, somewhat resolved, although Bryan Kohberger is trying to repreclaim his innocence. Get out, essentially. He's trying to, you know, find a way out of prison. He apparently isn't enjoying it all that much. But also, there was a recent Netflix documentary that dropped in July on this case. And as soon as I saw the trailer for it, I was like, oh my god, I need to watch that and revisit this case. And that documentary, I thought, was very well done. And it really gives you sort of the play-by-play, especially through law enforcement's eyes and the family, of how that all sort of went down from the night that the murders happened to the manhunt that follows in the investigation. And I think body cam footage is really interesting. And I think there's a reason why so many people really are just enthralled by police body cam, because it just gives you the realness that sometimes is missing from these cases. And then, of course, hearing the victim's family members and their experiences just makes it that much more real.

Because I think this case, one of the issues with it was it went absolutely crazy online with the online sluice and all the people that were saying all sorts of statements and salacious things and accusing people with no evidence. I mean, this case really got completely out of hand online and on social media.

Ian (4:53)