This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Bruske, Stacey Cole, and Todd Michaels.

I want to talk about another case here today, that of course Brian Koberger, not the criminal aspect of this anymore, but I guess where it's naturally going now, civil.

The Gonzalez family is now going after Washington State University, essentially saying,

you had the guy in your building, in your program, on your payroll,

and you had warning after warning that something wasn't right and you didn't do enough.

We've seen the police reports and

the post-sentencing document dumps more than a dozen formal complaints. Women saying they felt

trapped and unsafe. A professor warned that if WSU gave him a PhD, they'd end up reading

about him, stalking and abusing students.

Now, the families are packaging all of that into a civil claim and asking a court to decide whether WSU dropped the ball in a way that the law actually recognizes.

So I want to get into this with Eric Fattisis defense attorney and a former prosecutor and look at the

roadmap here. What evidence we really have, what a plaintiff's lawyer is going to have to prove,

what WSU's defenses look like, and whether this is a long shot leverage play or a very

real liability problem for the university. Eric, first off, from a

prosecutor turned a civil litigator lens. How do you, how do you see this when you hear that

the Gonzalez family is pursuing a claim against Washington State University? What do you understand

that to mean in practical terms here?

Sure. From a practical perspective, it absolutely makes sense because the Gonzalez family is trying

to find some kind of solace, some kind of remedy within the civil court system. You know,

the criminal system did not get the outcome they wanted.

And so, Coburger doesn't have any money. They can't go after him for millions of dollars. So they've got to look to some other entity with deep pockets, enter the university.

And then what's going to be really critical is what did the university know before this happened?

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