This is open to debate. I'm John Donvan. Hi, everybody. For this episode, another conversation in the series that we call Think Twice. And that's where we explore a topic that's been getting a lot of attention, but where there are still a lot of questions left over, or where there are dimensions that reveal more than we might have suspected in the beginning.

In this instance, we are looking at a murder case, one that just reached a conclusive moment.

It is popularly known as the Idaho Four case, and that is named for the four victims,

who were students at the University of Idaho who were murdered in their beds in their

off-campus housing in the early morning hours of November 13th, 2022. It's one of those cases that

garnered national and even international attention. The four students, and to start with, let's name

them, Madison Mogan, Kaley Gonzalez, Zana Kronodl, and Ethan Schapen. These four students all lived up to the saying they had their whole lives in front of them. I know it's a cliche, but it's just absolutely true in this case. Now, in the same week that we are taping this, the trial of the killer, a PhD student named Brian Koberger, ended with his being sentenced to life in prison without chance for parole.

He pleaded guilty, which let him escape the death penalty.

As all of this was happening, a new book has come out about the case.

It's called The Idaho Four, an American tragedy, and it's been making its way up the bestseller

lists.

Its two authors are James Patterson, the hugely successful crime fiction writer, and Vicki Ward,

whose nonfiction work has also made her a New York Times bestseller in the past.

Vicki Ward is our guest, so a little bit more about her. She is not just an author. She's also

a podcaster, a documentary host, a producer, a former CNN senior reporter, a magazine editor

at large, an entrepreneur, and a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford.

And what we hope to do here, as I said at the beginning, is more than your usual true crime kind of thing.

It's to learn from Vicky what there is to learn when a case like this happens along lines that maybe we haven't thought about before and along lines that don't always get enough attention. So let's do it. Vicky Ward is with us, and it's my pleasure to say. Vicky, welcome to Open to Debate. Thank you so much for having me, John. My very first question is your decision to do a book on this. Just take me there. You know, this is not the kind of book that I normally or typically have written.

You know, I focused in the past on corruption and power systems, politics, money.

My twin sons are 22 years old.

And at the time that the murders took place in November of 2022, they were in college.

They are the exact same age as the victims.

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