Howard Bloom (Investigative journalist and author)
Appearances
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
There was no prior interaction between Brian Kohlberger and any of the victims. They don't have any record of any conversations with them that they found, of him going through social media.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
What happened to these young people is a scene from a horror movie, and yet it was real.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
He was very demanding. He felt he was the smartest person in the room, and he wanted his students to approach somewhere his level of expertise, and they resented this.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
He would talk about this, it seemed, almost obsessively.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
It's very difficult for anyone to understand why any two people are attracted. But from the reporting I've done, they both were outsiders.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
She told people she, quote, felt something about Koberger. And at one point, She approached him as if she wanted a romantic relationship, and he pulled away, that she felt she wasn't good enough for him.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
She felt there was a break-in, and she discovers this step by step. First, she had baked a cake. She left it on the oven because it got burnt. She was going to throw it out. She comes into the house, and she finds it's in the microwave. Then she goes into the bathroom. Her cosmetics were all on a shelf, and now they've been lined up in a neat row on the top of the toilet seat.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
She's afraid to stay there. She goes to his apartment. They spend the night together. There's nothing romantic, but she stays there and she feels comfortable. It's only later that she begins to put the pieces together and she begins to think, well, maybe Brian knew about the letter I had received. He knew about the watch. Could he have taken them?
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
She tells Brian, he says, I don't know, I haven't seen anything. And then suddenly, a couple of hours later, the key materializes in her office drawer.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
And he installs the thing and he gets it working. And it's only later she begins to wonder... Was this on Brian's phone too? Could he look on his phone and see what was happening in my apartment? She realizes that this person she had called in her moment of need and desperation might now be not only spying on her, but also perhaps the perpetrator who had taken the valuables originally.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
And he would just rear up in fights. He would lose his temper.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
He got into a confrontation with one of the female students who approached her while she was at her car, and she did not like the vibes he was sending off.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
All this leads me to feel it was an internal battle. He had made up his mind at some point earlier to commit these crimes.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
If she had said one word, if she had screamed for help, if she didn't find the moments too overwhelming, I think she would have been killed too.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
The only explanation that I can find for that is cognitive dissonance. It's just too overwhelming. They can't process it in any rational way, so they behave in a way that's irrational.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
The 911 call is absolutely harrowing. It's clear that they were totally shocked. You can see how they're overwhelmed by this event.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
And during the course of this ride, it has been explained to me, the father starts getting suspicions. They're looking for a white car. My son drives a white car. He lives 10 miles away from the murder scene. He has emotional problems. Could he be involved in this?
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
He's sorting his garbage. He's wearing gloves. And one of the other family members, a sister, comes up to the father and says, in effect, Dad, Brian could possibly be involved in these murders.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
The police come bashing down the door. They break windows. They tie zip ties around his parents. And then he's let out, and he gets in the backseat of the patrol car, and he says, you know, maybe we should get a cup of coffee when this is over, as if he thinks this is going to have a happy ending and life is going to go back to normal.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
He loses his weight and he turns himself into literally another person.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
His body becomes a temple. He's eating vegan. He's working out. So he's created this other individual.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
What the defense is going to do is saying, yeah, we'll concede that there's a match on the DNA, but the real question is, how did the knife sheath get there? How did the DNA get there?
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
His master's teachers, one of them, said he was one of the two best students she ever had in 10 years.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
and by the state not identifying it. They said they couldn't put him through CODIS. They didn't seem to make any effort to track down who these bloods could have belonged to so that they could have dismissed them. But it now allows Coburg's defense to raise the specter of, ha ha, there were other people there that night.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
Dylan was interviewed by the police four times. The first one, she brings up caveats. She says, I was drunk that night. She said, I was sort of in a dreamlike state. And then she's shown a mugshot sort of photo, and she says, I have no idea who this is. Oh, boy. It's giving the defense evidence that they can take to the jury and raise questions.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
That's his alibi. He was out driving around at 4 o'clock in the morning, looking at stars on a cloudy, freezing night.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
I mean, the stakes here are enormous. The whole world is still watching, listening, and following this.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
There is an element that's very cinematic about this whole story.
Dateline NBC
The Terrible Night On King Road
It's no crime to be a night owl, but it all adds to this level of mystery, of detachment from society that was his persona.