This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive.
He's a New York Times bestselling author, Howard Bloom. He's an American author and journalist as well, formerly a reporter for The Village Voice in New York Times. He's got a new book out called When the Night Comes Falling. It's a requiem for the Idaho student Murders, the inside story of the mysterious murders that have horrified and captivated the nation. Welcome Howard Bloom.
Nice to speak with you.
You too. This is the realization I think of every parent's nightmare. A group of students at the prime of their life, getting ready to go on break when all of a sudden their lives are cut short.
Yes, I mean there are videos of the police coming to the house in Moscow where the murders occurred for noise disturbances, and you can see just a bunch of young kids, full of life, full of beauty, full of exuper He's having a good time, and it makes the tragedy particularly poignant when you watch those videos.
So what have we learned in the meantime since the arrest and things have been progressing.
Well. The suspect is Brian Coberger, who is a criminology student at a nearby university, Washington State University. He was trying, I believe, to create the perfect crime, and yet there's a trove of evidence that the prosecution is assembled that puts him in the crosshairs of this case. There's touch DNA off a button of a knife sheaf that was left. There's surveillance video of a white Hondai Elantra. He drove
a white Hondei Lantra. There's his phone being shut off for the two hours during the period while the murders occurred, and he's drove by the house. All these elements build a very convincing case. Again, in fact, on the night when the police arrest him in the Poconos, they burst into the house in the Poconos, they go into the kitchen, they find him there sitting in his boxer shorts and he's taking his garbage and putting it into plastic bags.
So he's separating his DNAs from the family so that in case the police comes to grab the family's garbage, he won't be caught. It didn't work out that way.
Though he was painstaking about his preparation. Is there any thought that that may be why he became a criminology student in the first place.
I don't know if that's why he became a criminology student in the first place. But he was fascinated with crime, and the more he got into it, this fascination builds and builds and builds, and I think he decided to He wanted to experience the real thing. He was a troubled youth. He had been a heroin addict. He had been a mediocre student. But he's able to find the will to move on from how to become a graduate student, a doctoral kind of a top university. And yet he
still cannot escape from who he is. I mean, biology is destiny. His state is determined by who he is. And he always saw himself on the periphery of events, and he felt that was a constant rebuke to him and his way of looking at the world. And one night he decided he just had to do something about it.
Howard Bloom, when the Night comes Falling Arequiem for the Idaho Student Murders out Now he's a New York New York Times bestselling author, of Dark Invasion and the Last Good Night. What was it about these students that attracted them as a target. I mean, they didn't go to the same school, so how did they have any interaction prior to the murder?
I mean he raised a very good point. Both the prosecution and the defense agree on one point, and that is that the suspect never talked to any of the students, that he never followed them on social media. However, I've been able to theorize that coburger of the suspect was a vegan. There was a vegan restaurant in town where one of the students, Matty Mugen, was a waitress. I believe he encountered her at that restaurant. He didn't even
need to speak with her. Obsessions came easily to him, and for some reason, he fixated on her fondness, her exuberance, her beauty, her vitality, and she was a constant reminder of everything he was not. And on the night of November thirteenth, he set out not to kill four students I believe that I recreated in my book, but he set out just to kill Matti Mogen and everyone else who lost their lives, who was bludgeoned to death, was grimly horrifically collateral damage.
When the night comes falling a requiem for Idaho's students murders, Howard blooms with us and so was there any significance to the time of year in which this happened.
In his own life, he was having problems. He had been a teaching assistant at the University of Washington. He was on a full scholarship which is paid for by his teaching and he had gotten in trouble with the department, and the department was putting him under review, and it looked like he very well could lose the job. And they'd pull him in about a week before the murders and say, you know your job is on the line. He was just too volid. All the students didn't like
the way he interacted with them. He seemed, according to some of the female students, to be treating them as a misogynistic way in the class. And when Coberger is informed of this by the university officials and the supervising professor, he doesn't say, Okay, I'll try to deal with things, but he explodes and he tries to make his own case, and so his life was in jeopardy, and losing the
job would be losing his chance to reinvent himself. From this, a student from a hard stubble background was now going to become a PhD. And I think that existential shock to a system is part of what throws him off kilter.
Howard Bloom a requiem for the Idaho student murders. When the night comes falling and was there a was there any sexual assault to any of the victims, or was it all just murder?
There was no sexual assault, that it was all just murdered. The story about Coberg's sexuality in a sense I described how he goes to a pool party long after he goes out to Moscow, and it's all filled with kids and they're having a good time, and he's sitting by the pool by himself, and he suddenly gets up and he approaches two young women and both of them seems to be wearing black two piece bathing suits, and he
asks for their phone numbers and he gets it. He gets both their numbers, and then he immediately leaves the party. He never calls the women. I spoke with them, but they started receiving hang up falls and afterwards after Coburg was arrest they put the pieces together that this might very well have been Coburger calling them, And I think this sort of sums up his sexual relationship with other people. He could never make the leap to become a fully integrated person, yet he wanted to be.
And they very well may have been his first targets, and they got by by this in the neck.
Yes, I think he was. You know, this idea was taking hold of his mind and he wasn't quite there yet. Even on the night of the Murderers, he goes by the murder house not once, not twice, but three times. You know, there have been some reports that he was stalking the house. I don't think that's accurate, and I recreated he was trying to find the whell, trying to find the commitment to move into this world of becoming
a murderer. Each time he goes by the house he escaped, he drives off into the distance, and yet he's pulled back as if by a magnet, and he just can't escape.
Who he is when the night comes falling Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders. Howard Bloom is the author of the books available everywhere and thank you for joining us.
Howard, my pleasure speaking with you.
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation