Bryan Kohberger's plea deal in the Idaho student murders almost never happened, and investigative journalist Howard Blum says the reason had nothing to do with the evidence against him. Blum is the New York Times bestselling author of When the Night Comes Falling. He sits down with Tony Brueski and retired FBI Special Agent Robin Dreeke to work through a phone call Kohberger placed less than two hours after four University of Idaho students were killed in the house on King Road. Records show that call going to a phone registered to his father, Michael Kohberger. Blum's reporting says the person Bryan actually spent most of it talking to was his mother, Maryann. What came out of the Kohberger household afterward shaped how this whole case ended. Blum lays out the sequence he reconstructed from his sources. He says Kohberger's defense team privately concluded it could not raise reasonable doubt. Judge Steven Hippler threw out the alternate perpetrator theory as allegation rather than evidence. The judge then ruled that the alibi was not an alibi at all. And Kohberger's parents came to understand that they could be the ones sitting on a witness stand. Blum also walks through the four-day drive Michael Kohberger made across the country with his son in a white Hyundai Elantra, while police in every state hunted that exact car. There were traffic stops along the way. And the DNA that finally closed the loop came from the father himself. Robin Dreeke reads the behavior sitting underneath all of it. He explains why a call at that hour registers as a spike, what a family talks itself into believing, and how long a parent can stare at the data and still refuse to see what it says. Four families were told this case was finished. Blum's reporting says the decision that finished it got made on a telephone. Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ ​Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod Listen Ad-Free On Apple Podcasts Here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-today-premium-plus-ad-free-advance-episode/id1705422872 This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.