The True Crime Tapes

MC2 Model Management was a modeling agency created in 2005 from the U.S. operations of French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, with offices in New York and Miami. Brunel had already faced allegations dating back years concerning his treatment of young models, and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein had become extremely close by the early 2000s. Epstein was not simply another acquaintance hanging around the fashion world. A former MC2 bookkeeper testified under oath that Epstein guaranteed a $1 million line of credit for the agency and directly paid expenses connected to foreign models, including visas. Models associated with MC2 were also...

Dr. Michael Baden, forensic psychologist Joni Johnston and criminal profiler John Kelly were among the experts who weighed in publicly as investigators tried to make sense of the University of Idaho murders before the full case against Bryan Kohberger was known. Baden focused heavily on the physical crime scene and the likely use of a large fixed-blade knife, explaining that the wounds, blood patterns and condition of the victims could help investigators determine the sequence of the attacks, whether the killer had been injured and whether DNA or other trace evidence had been left behind. He also emphasized that...

Bank of America’s relationship to Jeffrey Epstein’s financial network became a major legal and regulatory problem because survivors alleged the bank processed suspicious transactions involving people and entities around Epstein while failing to report obvious red flags quickly enough. The most significant issue involved roughly $170 million that Leon Black sent to Epstein between 2012 and 2017 through Bank of America accounts. Senate investigators later found that the bank did not file its first suspicious activity report on those payments until February 2020, years after the transfers began and months after Epstein’s 2019 arrest. In that filing, Bank of America itself reportedly said t...

The FBI had investigated one of Bryan Kohberger’s proposed defense witnesses after concerns were raised about the reliability of information she planned to provide in the University of Idaho murder case. The witness, identified as a woman who claimed to have information that could challenge parts of the prosecution’s timeline or evidence, had drawn attention because Kohberger’s attorneys suggested her testimony might support the defense. Federal investigators examined her background and the circumstances surrounding her claims, including whether she had accurately represented what she knew and how she came to possess the information. The development created an unusua...

Shortly after Bryan Kohberger’s arrest, a Daily Mail report cited an unnamed source who claimed investigators believed Kohberger had stalked at least some of the University of Idaho victims for weeks before the November 13, 2022 murders. According to the source, cellphone data allegedly showed Kohberger’s location overlapping with the movements of the victims on multiple occasions, leading the source to say that his phone had appeared to follow their “every move for weeks.” At the time, investigators had not publicly established whether Kohberger had ever directly interacted with Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle or Ethan Chapin, and no motive h...

Utah County has already spent roughly $1.6 million on Tyler Robinson’s publicly funded defense in the year since he was charged with murdering Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, and the bill is expected to climb substantially as the death-penalty case moves toward trial. Because Robinson was found unable to afford his own attorneys, the county appointed an experienced capital-defense team led by Kathryn Nester, with Michael Burt and Richard Novak also representing him. Capital cases require lawyers who meet heightened qualifications, along with investigators, experts, extensive discovery review and unusually demanding pretrial preparation. Robinson’s case has added anot...

On September 11, 2001, I was 21 years old and working at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, where crews had spent the previous day loading in the band 311 for a multi-day event. After working a 16-hour shift, I was asleep when my mother woke me to say that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. At first, I assumed it was a small aircraft and a tragic accident. That changed when I went downstairs and watched the second plane strike the other tower. Standing in my parents’ living room, I looked at them and said, “We are...

Seven women, including five Jane Does, Kersti Ferguson and Audra Christiansen, sued celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai, his company and employee Patrick Coombs, alleging that Fekkai’s salon became part of Jeffrey Epstein’s grooming and control system. The complaint portrayed Fekkai not as a peripheral acquaintance but as someone who allegedly benefited financially from Epstein while providing salon services to women and girls at Epstein’s direction for years. According to the filing, Epstein sent the plaintiffs to Fekkai and instructed that they be styled to look as young as possible, including bleaching their hair blond and making them loo...

Seven women, including five Jane Does, Kersti Ferguson and Audra Christiansen, sued celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai, his company and employee Patrick Coombs, alleging that Fekkai’s salon became part of Jeffrey Epstein’s grooming and control system. The complaint portrayed Fekkai not as a peripheral acquaintance but as someone who allegedly benefited financially from Epstein while providing salon services to women and girls at Epstein’s direction for years. According to the filing, Epstein sent the plaintiffs to Fekkai and instructed that they be styled to look as young as possible, including bleaching their hair blond and making them loo...

Law-enforcement agencies in at least five European countries reportedly said the U.S. Justice Department had failed to respond to formal requests for assistance as they pursued investigations stemming from the expanding Jeffrey Epstein record. Officials in Poland, Norway, Latvia, the United Kingdom and Germany told The Washington Post that they had sought help through mutual legal assistance requests, the established process governments use to obtain evidence, records or testimony located in another country. According to the reporting, those requests remained unanswered even as investigators abroad examined people, financial connections and other parts of Epstein’s international network. The silence be...

Jes Staley’s testimony to Congress was extraordinarily difficult to believe because his repeated claims of ignorance about Jeffrey Epstein collided with the sheer depth of their relationship and with Staley’s own admissions under questioning. Staley maintained that he never knew Epstein was trafficking or abusing girls, yet he acknowledged an association that involved hundreds of communications, repeated visits to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and Little St. James, and continued contact after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. He also admitted sharing confidential and potentially market-sensitive JPMorgan information with Epstein, including information about the bank’s communications with the Federal Reserve during the...

Jes Staley’s testimony to Congress was extraordinarily difficult to believe because his repeated claims of ignorance about Jeffrey Epstein collided with the sheer depth of their relationship and with Staley’s own admissions under questioning. Staley maintained that he never knew Epstein was trafficking or abusing girls, yet he acknowledged an association that involved hundreds of communications, repeated visits to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and Little St. James, and continued contact after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. He also admitted sharing confidential and potentially market-sensitive JPMorgan information with Epstein, including information about the bank’s communications with the Federal Reserve during the...

The search warrants showed that investigators in the Moscow murders case cast an exceptionally wide net as they tried to reconstruct Bryan Kohberger’s movements, communications, purchases and behavior before and after the killings. Authorities sought records from cellphone providers, Google, Apple, Amazon, social-media companies, banks, dating apps, internet providers and other businesses, while also searching Kohberger’s apartment, office, vehicle and family home. The warrants revealed that investigators were looking for far more than a single piece of incriminating evidence. They wanted location data, search histories, cloud files, photographs, messages, financial transactions, possible purchases of knives or related equipment, conn...

Dr. Michael Baden, forensic psychologist Joni Johnston and criminal profiler John Kelly were among the experts who weighed in publicly as investigators tried to make sense of the University of Idaho murders before the full case against Bryan Kohberger was known. Baden focused heavily on the physical crime scene and the likely use of a large fixed-blade knife, explaining that the wounds, blood patterns and condition of the victims could help investigators determine the sequence of the attacks, whether the killer had been injured and whether DNA or other trace evidence had been left behind. He also emphasized that...

Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal troubles have steadily consumed the fortune and lifestyle that once placed her among the wealthy and well-connected circles surrounding Jeffrey Epstein. Years of civil litigation were already generating enormous legal bills before her 2020 arrest, and Maxwell had previously sought reimbursement from Epstein’s estate for expenses she said she incurred because of allegations connected to him, including more than $600,000 in legal fees submitted by one of her law firms. Her criminal prosecution then added years of defense costs, appeals and post-conviction litigation, while imprisonment cut her off from the affluent life she once enjoyed. By 2025 and 2026, the...

Months before the University of Idaho murders, Bryan Kohberger was accused in a 2023 Dateline report of carrying out a disturbing scheme involving a female colleague at Washington State University. According to unnamed sources cited by the program, the woman returned to her apartment and found that someone had entered and moved belongings around, although nothing had been stolen. She did not initially call police and instead contacted Kohberger, whom she had befriended at WSU, for help. Kohberger then reportedly offered to install a video security system inside her apartment, and she agreed. Investigators later came to suspect that Kohberger himself...

Washington State University had been investigating Bryan Kohberger’s conduct as a criminology Ph.D. student and teaching assistant during the same period in which the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin occurred. Faculty concerns reportedly began early in the fall 2022 semester and included Kohberger’s interactions with professors as well as complaints from female students who said his behavior made them uncomfortable. In one reported incident, he was accused of following a woman to her car, although the university’s investigation did not find him guilty of wrongdoing over the complaints involving women. Less t...

Day one of Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing on July 6, 2026, largely centered on prosecutors beginning to construct a timeline of Charlie Kirk’s killing at Utah Valley University and establishing the authenticity of the surveillance footage and investigative records they intended to use against Robinson. Former UVU police officer Chris Bagley described the moment the gunshot rang out during Kirk’s September 10, 2025 event and the chaos that followed, while Utah State Bureau of Investigation agent David Hull walked the court through the enormous video-review effort undertaken after the shooting. Hull testified that investigators examined hundreds of hours of surveillance footage and ul...

Katherine White, Stephanie Wilt and Hailey Youngling were all forensic scientists with Idaho State Police Forensic Services who became part of the prosecution’s expert-witness lineup in the Bryan Kohberger case. White, a Forensic Scientist III, specialized in forensic biology and DNA and was expected to explain DNA extraction, quantification, amplification, STR and Y-STR analysis, probabilistic genotyping and the examination of biological fluids and trace evidence. Her role was tied to the broader DNA work that became central to the case, including explaining how biological material was collected, preserved, tested and interpreted. Wilt was also a forensic biology and DN...

The transcripts from Jes Staley’s July 24, 2026 interview with the House Oversight Committee revealed just how deep and personal his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein became, while also exposing contradictions in the way Staley had described that relationship publicly. Staley acknowledged visiting Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse dozens of times, traveling to Little St. James on multiple occasions and exchanging roughly 1,200 communications with Epstein between 2008 and 2012. He admitted that he had shared confidential and potentially market-sensitive JPMorgan information with Epstein, including details about the bank’s business, client relationships, pending transactions and even communications involving the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis. Staley...

The transcripts from Jes Staley’s July 24, 2026 interview with the House Oversight Committee revealed just how deep and personal his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein became, while also exposing contradictions in the way Staley had described that relationship publicly. Staley acknowledged visiting Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse dozens of times, traveling to Little St. James on multiple occasions and exchanging roughly 1,200 communications with Epstein between 2008 and 2012. He admitted that he had shared confidential and potentially market-sensitive JPMorgan information with Epstein, including details about the bank’s business, client relationships, pending transactions and even communications involving the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis. Staley...

A traveling exhibit in Dallas is putting roughly three million pages of Jeffrey Epstein-related records on public display while deliberately highlighting Epstein’s past relationship with President Donald Trump. Organizers have named it the “Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” describing the project as both a public archive and a tribute to survivors. The exhibit includes shelves of documents tied to Epstein’s trafficking operation along with a visual timeline tracing Trump and Epstein’s social relationship before Trump became president. Coordinator David Garrett said Trump’s name appears tens of thousands of times in the released files and ac...

Former New Mexico Attorney General Gary King’s effort to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein rested heavily on semantics, particularly his insistence that Epstein “wasn’t my friend.” But the documentary record made that explanation look increasingly strained. Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell contributed thousands of dollars to King’s political campaigns, Epstein had longstanding ties to the King family through the purchase of the property that became Zorro Ranch, and King’s office was involved in arranging a meeting with Epstein in 2010, after Epstein was already a convicted sex offender. King also benefited from an Epstein-linked aircraft during his 2014 gubernatorial campaign, ev...

Former New Mexico Attorney General Gary King’s effort to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein rested heavily on semantics, particularly his insistence that Epstein “wasn’t my friend.” But the documentary record made that explanation look increasingly strained. Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell contributed thousands of dollars to King’s political campaigns, Epstein had longstanding ties to the King family through the purchase of the property that became Zorro Ranch, and King’s office was involved in arranging a meeting with Epstein in 2010, after Epstein was already a convicted sex offender. King also benefited from an Epstein-linked aircraft during his 2014 gubernatorial campaign, ev...

Judge John Judge issued an order denying Bryan Kohberger’s motion to strike the death penalty on the grounds that he may have Autism Spectrum Disorder. Kohberger’s defense team argued that his possible diagnosis made him categorically ineligible for the death penalty under constitutional protections. However, the judge ruled that Idaho law does not recognize autism as a categorical bar to capital punishment, unlike intellectual disability. He emphasized that while evidence of Kohberger’s mental health status may be presented during the sentencing phase if he is convicted, it is not a basis to prevent the State from seeking the de...

Bryan Kohberger’s defense filed a motion in limine asking Judge Steven Hippler to prevent surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen from describing the masked intruder she saw inside 1122 King Road as having “bushy eyebrows.” The defense argued that the description was unreliable and potentially prejudicial, pointing to the limited conditions under which Mortensen saw the man, questions about her intoxication that night and her inability to provide detailed descriptions of other facial features. Kohberger’s attorneys also disputed whether his own eyebrows could fairly be characterized as bushy and argued that allowing the phrase before the jury could improperly reinforce the prosecut...

Jeffrey Epstein’s control over the girls and young women he exploited went far beyond the abuse itself. Survivor accounts and court records describe a system in which Epstein gathered intimate information about their families, finances, ambitions, relationships, immigration problems, insecurities and personal crises, then used those vulnerabilities as leverage. In that sense, the information functioned like individualized dossiers: he learned what each woman wanted, what she feared and what could be taken away from her. Survivors have described Epstein inserting himself into virtually every part of their lives, offering money, jobs, education, housing, career connections or help for re...

In the days after the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, attention increasingly centered on the unusual layout of the three-story King Road house and how an attacker could have moved through it without immediately alerting everyone inside. The home had six bedrooms spread across three levels, multiple entrances and a sliding-glass door at the rear, while the victims were found on the second and third floors. Two surviving roommates were also inside the house that night, though police initially said they were believed to have slept through the attacks. Former tenants later described the...

James Patterson’s new book, The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy, offers a detailed and emotionally charged narrative of the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students—Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin. The book reconstructs the victims' final hours and the immediate aftermath of the killings, weaving together personal details about their lives, relationships, and the horror of what took place inside their off-campus home. Patterson brings readers inside the crime scene, the families’ heartbreak, and the small-town panic that erupted as police struggled to explain the brutality of what had occurred.

The second half o...

The State’s amended supplemental expert disclosure for Idaho State Police forensic scientist Tina Walthall outlined the latent-print testimony prosecutors expected to present in Bryan Kohberger’s case. Walthall was identified as a forensic science expert specializing in fingerprints and friction-ridge evidence, and the disclosure said she would explain how latent prints were deposited, developed, preserved and compared, as well as the limitations that affected whether usable prints could be recovered from an object. Most importantly, Walthall processed the Ka-Bar leather knife sheath recovered from Madison Mogen’s bedroom and did not observe or develop any latent fingerprints from it. She al...

The transcripts from Jes Staley’s July 24, 2026 interview with the House Oversight Committee revealed just how deep and personal his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein became, while also exposing contradictions in the way Staley had described that relationship publicly. Staley acknowledged visiting Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse dozens of times, traveling to Little St. James on multiple occasions and exchanging roughly 1,200 communications with Epstein between 2008 and 2012. He admitted that he had shared confidential and potentially market-sensitive JPMorgan information with Epstein, including details about the bank’s business, client relationships, pending transactions and even communications involving the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis. Staley...

The transcripts from Jes Staley’s July 24, 2026 interview with the House Oversight Committee revealed just how deep and personal his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein became, while also exposing contradictions in the way Staley had described that relationship publicly. Staley acknowledged visiting Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse dozens of times, traveling to Little St. James on multiple occasions and exchanging roughly 1,200 communications with Epstein between 2008 and 2012. He admitted that he had shared confidential and potentially market-sensitive JPMorgan information with Epstein, including details about the bank’s business, client relationships, pending transactions and even communications involving the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis. Staley...

The transcripts from Jes Staley’s July 24, 2026 interview with the House Oversight Committee revealed just how deep and personal his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein became, while also exposing contradictions in the way Staley had described that relationship publicly. Staley acknowledged visiting Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse dozens of times, traveling to Little St. James on multiple occasions and exchanging roughly 1,200 communications with Epstein between 2008 and 2012. He admitted that he had shared confidential and potentially market-sensitive JPMorgan information with Epstein, including details about the bank’s business, client relationships, pending transactions and even communications involving the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis. Staley...

Bryan Kohberger is scheduled to return to court on October 15, 2026, as his new legal team continues trying to undo the guilty plea that sent him to prison for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. The October hearing is expected to focus on the defense effort to disqualify Judge Steven Hippler from presiding over Kohberger’s post-conviction case. Hippler sentenced Kohberger in July 2025 to four consecutive life terms without parole after Kohberger admitted killing the four University of Idaho students as part of a plea agreement that removed the death penalty. Kohberger is now cl...

Julia Molchanova, a Russian woman who met Jeffrey Epstein in New York in 2011 when she was 22, described how he drew her into what she later called a “cult”-like system of control by exploiting her ambitions and vulnerabilities. Epstein initially promised to help her pursue fashion design and attend the Fashion Institute of Technology, paid for classes and helped her move to New York, but the promised career never materialized. Instead, Molchanova said he sexually abused her, pressured her to become one of his so-called assistants, dictated how she dressed, wore her hair, spent money and conducted relationships, and repeatedly dema...

Julia Molchanova, a Russian woman who met Jeffrey Epstein in New York in 2011 when she was 22, described how he drew her into what she later called a “cult”-like system of control by exploiting her ambitions and vulnerabilities. Epstein initially promised to help her pursue fashion design and attend the Fashion Institute of Technology, paid for classes and helped her move to New York, but the promised career never materialized. Instead, Molchanova said he sexually abused her, pressured her to become one of his so-called assistants, dictated how she dressed, wore her hair, spent money and conducted relationships, and repeatedly dema...

In the hours and days after the November 13, 2022 murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, people who encountered Bryan Kohberger at Washington State University later described behavior that, in hindsight, struck them as noticeably different. Students said Kohberger, normally an active participant in criminology discussions, became conspicuously quiet when the Moscow murders were discussed. One classmate told investigators that he stopped bringing his cellphone to class and instead used his laptop, while others remembered him appearing increasingly preoccupied, unkempt and disheveled, with facial hair growing in where he had previously been clean-shaven. Some witnesses also...

The Bryan Kohberger case became consumed by a prolonged discovery fight as his defense team repeatedly accused prosecutors of failing to turn over evidence completely, promptly or in a usable form. Anne Taylor and her team filed multiple motions to compel, arguing that they were still waiting for laboratory records, police reports, interrogation materials, body-camera footage, digital evidence, DNA-related documentation and other investigative material they believed was necessary to test the state’s case. In one early motion, the defense specifically said it had not received certain forensic lab reports, recordings from Kohberger’s interrogation or materials tied to his arre...

Jes Staley’s fall from the highest levels of global banking was extraordinary because so much of it ultimately traced back to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Staley spent decades climbing through JPMorgan, eventually running its investment bank and becoming one of Wall Street’s most powerful executives before taking over as chief executive of Barclays in 2015. But Epstein followed him into that job. Regulators investigating the relationship discovered that Staley had portrayed Epstein as little more than a professional contact when their correspondence told a very different story: Staley had described Epstein as one of his “deepest” and “most cheri...

Unsealed search warrants revealed that investigators had seized a wide range of weapons, clothing, electronics and other potential evidence from Bryan Kohberger’s parents’ Pennsylvania home when he was arrested on December 30, 2022. Among the items taken were multiple knives, including a Smith & Wesson pocketknife and another knife with a leather sheath, along with a Glock 22 Gen5 .40-caliber handgun and three empty magazines. Police also collected black face masks, black gloves, dark-colored jackets, shirts and pants, several pairs of shoes and boots, a cellphone, laptops, hard drives, criminology books and numerous documents and handwritten notes. Investigators had specifically been authorized to sear...