When I asked how he’d shoot it, he clarified, “If there wasn’t a murder, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

Entin waved for me to follow him over to it. He anchored the pretend live shot with serious enthusiasm: “The trash is so high—let me stand next to the trash. Let me show you.” 

He positioned his body next to the dumpster for scale. “If I stand here, it’s literally above my head. I’m five feet eight, and the trash is above my head.” 

Dramatically, he concluded, “And if it wasn’t this cold, imagine what this would smell like.” 

Even when the news is garbage, Entin is a star.

On December 29, a source alerted Entin that the Moscow PD would be holding an important press conference the next day. Entin felt like something big was about to “erupt.” The next morning, at 8:02 a.m., he received a Twitter DM from someone in Pennsylvania law enforcement, saying that a “Bryan Kohberger” was in custody in connection with the case. After some back and forth, Entin was able to confirm it. 

At 8:26 a.m., Entin tweeted: “An arrest has been made in the Moscow, Idaho quadruple homicide I have learned.” Sixteen minutes later: “Arrest happened early this morning in Pennsylvania.” At 9:06 a.m.: “Arrest paperwork filed in Monroe County, Pennsylvania shows 28 year old Bryan Christopher Kohberger is being held for extradition in a homicide investigation in Moscow, Idaho. On my way to Pennsylvania now.” At 9:09 a.m., he tweeted Kohberger’s mug shot. By 11 a.m. he was on a plane. When Entin landed, the tip had made national news.

Later, stationed outside the Kohbergers’ gated community, Entin received another Twitter message from a woman claiming to be one of their neighbors. She offered to drive him through the gates. They met at a gas station, where Entin tucked aside his fear of being kidnapped, because she seemed like a “nice lady.” Entin got in the car. She dropped him outside the Kohberger house, which had been raided less than 24 hours before. Entin went live on Twitter. He knocked on the door, its pane busted out by police in the raid. Behind it came a muffled voice, demanding to know who Entin was. Entin introduced himself as a journalist. The voice told him to go away. He did.

Over the next few days, Entin barely slept, fueled by an adrenaline rush as he chased down rumors and reported on the ones that were true. Later he received a text message from Kaylee Goncalves’s family, thanking him for his news coverage. Maybe it was exhaustion, but the text brought tears to Entin’s eyes. 

“It just feels so good to know they think I’ve done a good job and been respectful. It’s truly so fucking incredible and has me feeling really raw.”

Since Kohberger’s arrest, so-called “suspects,” like Jack Showalter, Jack DuCoeur (Goncalves’s ex-boyfriend), and Chapin’s fraternity brothers, have been exonerated by reality—though who knows what kind of psychological or professional toll this kind of experience exacts. One of the surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen, however, continues to withstand a huge amount of abuse. Mortensen and the other surviving roommate, Bethany Funke—both named as victims in prosecutorial filings—were pilloried on social media, a friend of theirs told me, alleging that one self-appointed “detective” posted pictures of Mortensen and Funke every day, analyzing their “evil” expressions and accusing them of the crime. 

Neuroscientists have found that when we interact with social media, it’s the anticipation of answers, not their existence, that stirs in us a need to keep clicking, scrolling, and posting—perhaps that’s why Kohberger’s arrest brings less closure to sleuths than one might anticipate.

In our internet-addicted brains, it seems productive to skip past endings and repost whatever fresh allegations we’ve just read, misguided by the myth that social media is a tool for social justice. In reality, studies show that screens lower our empathy, increasing the tendency toward cruelty, which can camouflage online as heroism.

In Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Era, Dr. Tanya Horeck writes, “The notion that audiences can participate in true crime has, of course, always been a feature of the genre” because it offers a metaphorical seat in the jury box. What is different about today’s true crime audience, Horeck says, is their expectation that the genre literally be interactive—that “justice” is something that can be accessed through binge-watching.

There is something deeply human about fascination with crime. The central enigma of murder is death, a painful reality that comes for us all, and one that we instinctively fight throughout our lives, differentiating ourselves from victims like Mortensen and her housemates by judging their choices and hunting their killers, as if that protects us from random acts of violence.

But whatever we might learn at Bryan Kohberger’s trial, there can never be a tolerable explanation for what happened to Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin. We want to believe in social media’s immense power to reverse or at least rectify injustices. The alternative is that we’ve bought into a massive conspiracy, surfing and shaming and buying, fooled by the idea that our addiction to screens is productive, virtuous. Never mind the destruction we leave in our wake.


The Idaho Murders: How 4 College Kids Lived and Loved

The brutal murders of four Idaho college students shocked millions. Through social media posts, court records, and other primary sources, author Kathleen Hale forensically reconstructs their lives before the crime, and the night they were killed.

Kathleen Hale

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