The Cartel Conspiracy

Since the Idaho Four case exploded onto the news in November 2022, then with greater intensity with the arrest of a suspect in December of the same year, the conspiracies have been relentless. Largely driven by social media, Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube have been rife with the notion that Bryan Kohberger cannot have acted alone, that his arrest and impending trial are a mistake, a miscarriage of justice. That means other individual(s) must be involved which means there is a conspiracy.

The best conspiracies have a ring of plausibility. Let me be clear: I do not believe there is a conspiracy involving organised crime, the police, aliens, lads named ‘Jack’, the Idaho potato industry, or anything else.

One that has been persistent is that, due to unfounded rumours that 1122 King Road was a drug den, and the barbaric nature of the murders, a drug cartel must be involved. Some family members of the decedents had legal trouble related to narcotics (Kernodle and Mogen¹) and it is reasoned therefore that this had something to do with the killings.

Are the cartels in Idaho? According to the DOJ, there has been sufficient organised crime activity in Idaho to warrant a large investigation resulting in several indictments². However, this is located in and around Boise and Eastern Oregon. Moscow ID is right on the Washington state border, further North. That’s splitting hairs, but ultimately the answer to the question is yes. The Jalisco cartel has been shown to be active in Idaho in the distribution of fentanyl and methamphetamine.

There is an issue with all of this. With the exception of the brutal and bloody nature of the crime, it does not fit with the cartel pattern of purposely killing with the intent of intimidating rivals, showing their disdain for law and order, and terrorising the populace³. If it were a ‘communication killing’; the cartel would have publicised it accordingly³. Had law enforcement attempted a cover up, they would have had all the more reason to publicise it. The point is to shock and awe. Why risk blowing your highly lucrative narcotics network to kill four college kids, leave two witnesses (one of whom has stated publicly she doesn’t understand why it happened⁴) all for it to be blamed on some guy from out of state? Where’s the logic?

From first principles, a conspiracy would mean that the investigation would have need to be directed to make the evidence fit someone that wasn’t guilty. This would be back to front from the logical process. From the bottom up, that would mean every member of Moscow police department would have to be part of the conspiracy. Then, Idaho state police. But wait, there’s more! Also the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All of which would need to take place under scrutiny from every media outlet in the western world.

Moscow locals got absolutely sick of the media presence disrupting their little town⁵. Despite this, not one credible news outlet unearthed any evidence of a conspiracy involving organised crime or corruption. Think what a scoop that would be. You’ve got every muck-raking piece of shit yellow journalist in town looking for an angle, and not one of them finds anything that contradicts the publicly known facts. At most, there have been rumours about details of the crime and witness accounts (covered on this blog) but nothing sinister.

Know who loves a good, huge corruption case? The FBI⁶. They’re famed for it; ABSCAM, Tennessee Waltz, Trump, Richard Fucking Nixon; they’re proud of their anti-corruption history. Does it seem likely they would ignore a conspiracy by Idaho authorities that is handed to them on a plate. Would those same authorities risk the pretty-frisky-on-corruption feds if they were up to something? I mean, they asked for them pretty much immediately. That was the correct course of action for a small police department in over their heads on a sensational murder case. They invited the man into their house, no questions asked.

The FBI for their part have some miscarriages of justice in their history. They framed an innocent man to protect an informant⁷ and got found out many years later. It is tempting to ask the question if that could happen here: That Kohberger has been set up to protect and informant (presumably a federal informant?) but the FBI were not called into the case until after the murders occurred⁸, and it would imply the King Road house and occupants were involved in organised crime, for which again there’s no evidence that we know of.

The University of Idaho has been implicated as some kind of driver of the conspiracy. I’m not going to cite anything here; you can find the videos pretty easily. I don’t want to give those people traffic. It goes a bit like this. UoI is the economic prime-mover of Moscow, ID. Their institutional and economic self-interest means they must cover up the crime as rapidly as possible, and on their terms.

I have no doubt that UoI wants this to be over yesterday. It is likely they have exerted pressure on appointed chief James Fry, but this is normal city hall business. They don’t want the murders hanging over the town. It looks bad. They might be able to bug Fry about getting the case moving, and maybe the state police, but the FBI doesn’t give a shit about UoI. They’re going to do their job irrespective of what a university demands. The proof of this was the demolition of 1122 King Road. It can be argued it was premature (as the case has not been tried) but it is important to recognise it was no longer a crime scene; it had been surrendered by the investigation. They were done with it. It isn’t like it was demolished before processing was finished, so it is clear this was all above board. The house had no more secrets left to tell.

The evidence presented so far (the Probable Cause Affidavit) asserts there was only one suspect, in one vehicle. The forensic evidence from 1122 King Road should support this claim. We will know in time. In short: A conspiracy by the state is extremely unlikely, nor is there any credible evidence of same. There is no evidence the victims were involved in the distribution of narcotics or any other organised criminal activity. The crime does not fit cartel priors.

Nothing sinister is going on.

• Idaho Four