Page 91

Albrightsville, Pennsylvania

T he emergency response team readies the explosives, the flash-bangs they’ll use for “dynamic entry.” It’s the only way to handle dangerous arrests.

“You’ve got to protect the team,” Fry said. “It’s all about creating a diversion.”

If Kohberger was watching—and chances were, he was—he’d have no idea from the chief’s grim expression and matter-of-fact delivery that outside his window, around forty highly trained members of the Pennsylvania State Police SWAT team are getting ready to enter his parents’ house.

Fry, on the other side of the country, knows from personal experience exactly how this is going to play out.

Back in 2011, Fry’s ride-along partner, Paul Kwiatkowski, stood on a ladder looking into a room at the Best Western hotel where a UI assistant professor of psychology, Ernesto Bustamante, was holed up with six guns; he had just shot dead his student Katy Benoit, with whom he’d had a romantic relationship.

The cops wanted to get inside the room before he could shoot himself or someone else.

They had shot canisters of gas through the window to persuade him to come out.

Kwiatkowski’s goal was to explain what was going on and calm the professor down.

But with no warning, the SWAT team threw a flash-bang through the front door into the gas, temporarily blinding Kwiatkowski and almost knocking him off the ladder. The chief climbed up the ladder to rescue his friend, who recovered.

But Bustamante had killed himself by the time the cops got into the room. That was not ideal.

So Fry knows the playbook they’ll likely use in Monroe County.

The team in Pennsylvania would use flash-bangs as a distraction.

They’d likely throw one through the front door or run a diversionary device through, say, the back window or the kitchen.

The combination of the loud bang and the bright light usually stunned the occupants and gave the team time to get into the room.

The team in Pennsylvania wound up doing more than this to guarantee access. It was later determined that they’d blown out several windows and several doors.

They find Bryan Kohberger awake, dressed in shorts and a shirt. He’s standing in the kitchen wearing medical-type gloves putting trash in ziplock bags.

They surround him at gunpoint, zip-tie his hands, and stuff him in a police car.

Then they ransack the house and his car for anything and everything covered by the warrants.

A few hours later, Kohberger is sitting in the Monroe County jail. He’s been swabbed for DNA. After initially waiving his right to counsel and agreeing to speak with law enforcement without a lawyer, he’d changed his mind and asked for one.

At approximately 7:15 a.m. local time, Gary Jenkins accompanies the Moscow PD team with warrants to search Kohberger’s apartment in Pullman and his office on campus.

And at one p.m., James Fry ascends the podium at city hall. With Bill Thompson behind him on the left, he’s finally able to say the words that he hopes will deliver the knockout blow to his numerous critics.

“Last night, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, detectives arrested twenty-eight-year-old Bryan Christopher Kohberger in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, on a warrant for the murder of Ethan, Xana, Madison, and Kaylee.”

Later that night, Fry’s Florida emailer writes: “We’ll see if you got your right guy.”

Fry wonders if this guy will still be skeptical once Kohberger is in custody in Idaho and he’s read the probable-cause affidavit.

Because if ever a document demonstrated good police work, Fry thinks, this is surely it.