"NAVY JAG'S IMAGINARY FRIEND DEFENSE FAILS: Jury Needs One Hour While Idaho Killer Gets Screamed at Through Prison Vents"

0:03 Callaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm read Carter, and welcome back to Celebrity Trials. Hope you enjoyed our weekend deep dive into the Alec Baldwin rust shooting, a case where prosecutors hid bullets in the wrong box and set a killer free. Today we're back with updates on two killers who won't be walking free anytime soon. First, the conclusion of the Nicholas Cassotis trial, the former Navy jag officer who dismembered his wife and blamed it on a fictional CIA operative. Spoiler alert, the jury didn't buy the imaginary friend defense. Then Brian Koberger's having a rough time in Idaho's maximum security prison. Turns out when you murder four college students, your fellow inmates don't exactly roll out the welcome matt. They're more likely to roll it up and shout through it. At three am. Let's start with Cassotis.

1:01 Where last week we left off with wife number three testifying about an eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars check that supposedly burned in a car fire. Well, it gets worse, so much worse. The defendant takes the stand day seven of the trial, Wednesday, August thirteenth, Nicholas Cassotis does something most defense attorneys beg their clients not to do. He testifies, this is a man who graduated from law school, served as a jag officer in the Navy, worked as counsel to senior officers at the Pentagon. He knows better, but narcissists always think they're the smartest person in the room. He takes the stand and doubles down on Jim McIntyre, this mysterious figure who controlled their lives, who made them move fifty times in a few years, who controlled their bank accounts, who told them when to turn off their phones for safety. According to Cassotis, Mindy died in a hospital, not a traditional hospital, some kind of off the books medical facility that Jim McIntyre arranged. She was there for three days. He never visited because Jim said it wasn't safe.

2:07 He believed she was pregnant at the time. He thought everything was fine. Yes, he admits he bought the knife, the shovel, the deer processing kit. Yes, his car's GPS shows he drove the exact route where her body parts were found. Yes, he turned off his phone for two hours the morning of November twenty ninth, But that was all on Jim's advice for safety because of banking hacks and male disruptions they were experiencing. Prosecutor Lorie Bio tears him apart on cross examination. She points out his legal training, his military experience, his work at the Pentagon, and yet he has not a single document proving his employment, not one piece of paper from this mysterious hospital. No death certificate, no medical records, no proof Jim McIntyre exists. And here's the kicker. He never subpoened Jim McIntyre to testify at his murder trial, never hired a private investigator to find him.

3:02 When Bio asks why, his response is stunning in its arrogance. No, ma'am, I thought the state would do that, but you all didn't really care that much. The state didn't care. They're prosecuting you for murder. They searched for Jim McIntyre. He doesn't exist. But my favorite moment, and this shows you exactly who this man is, when asked what he did after learning his wife died, he went to a car wash. His wife is supposedly dead in some secret hospital and his first move is to detail the vehicle. The verdict Thursday, August fourteenth, day eight. The jury gets the case one hour.

3:43 That's all. It took seven women and five men needed just sixty minutes to see through the lies. Guilty on all twelve counts malice, murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, concealing a death, tampering with evidence, every single charge charge. Casotis blinks slowly as the verdicts are read. That's it. No emotion, no tears, just slow blinking, like a lizard in the sun. Meanwhile in the gallery, Mindy's family is sobbing. The jury foreman Cay Andrew spoke afterward. He said what happened to Mindy was unspeakable. He noted the complete lack of evidence that Jim McIntyre existed. He saw through the fiction, the victim impacts statements. Immediately after the verdict we moved to sentencing, and this is where it gets raw. Megan Mabane, Mindy's sister in law, doesn't hold back. You are a pathological liar.

4:39 You are a psychopath and a sociopath. You thought you were so much smarter than everyone else. You have forever changed the meaning of trust for me and my family. She reveals that Nicholas and Mindy lived with her family for fifteen months. Fifteen months, and Nicholas never contributed a dime, just lived off them. And while plotting his escape from the one point five million dollars, he owed his first wife, you have no remorse for what you did. You deserve to sit in prison for the rest of your life and think about Mindy every day. Morgan Paddock, Mindy's friend. She lived every day in fear and isolation. You kept her away from everyone who loved her. But the most devastating statement comes from wife number three, Samantha Kolesnik. Remember her, the horror writer who thought she was marrying a widower named Nicholas Stark. Her statement, read by the victim advocate, I feel raped by him. I was not allowed to consent to a romantic and intimate relationship with Nicholas because he lied about his entire identity. There was no opportunity for true consent. Think about that she married a man who didn't exist, had sex with a man who was lying about who he was. What happened to his wife his entire life. That's a violation so profound it doesn't even have a proper legal term. The parents plea. Nicholas's parents, Wayne and Linda Cassotis take the stand. They still believe he's innocent. Linda Cassotis, Nicholas was not responsible for this.

6:10 We know him to be a kind and gentle person. They got this wrong. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Your son dismembered his wife and scattered her across three counties, and you're sorry. The jury got it wrong. This is where monsters come from, parents who can't see the evil in front of their faces. Judge Paul Rose has hurt enough. He dismisses Jim McIntyre as pure fiction, a character created by a desperate man. You write fiction, and your life was a fiction at least the last six to seven years, and then you carried out a brutal, horrific, gruesome murder of Mindy. He continues, this case has revealed a level of depravity that truly should shocks the conscience. This is truly a heinous crime. All her hopes and dreams were dashed in an instant. You were someone who proposed to her to love her and care for her, then attacked her and then desecrated her body in such a vile way.

7:16 The sentence life without the possibility of parole plus twenty five consecutive years. Nicholas Cassotis will die in prison. No parole board will ever consider his release, No governor will commute his sentence. He's done, and he never even addressed the court, didn't apologize, didn't maintain his innocence, just sat there, blinking slowly as his life ended. Back in a moment with updates on Brian Coberger's prison nightmare. Welcome back to celebrity trials, I'm read Carter. Now let's talk about how Brian Koberger is adjusting to his new home in an, Idaho's maximum security prison. Spoiler not well. Inmate number one six three two one four. That's Brian Coburger now, not the criminology PhD student, not the teaching assistant, just a number in Idaho's only maximum security prison. He's in j block, solitary confinement. Twenty three hours a day in a single cell, one hour in the cage for outdoor recreation, showers every other day, restraints whenever he moves. But here's the beautiful part.

8:32 Solitary doesn't mean silent. According to Chris McDonough, a retired homicide detective, Coburger's fellow inmates have developed a new hobby, tormenting him through the air vents. It's driving him crazy. The inmates are tormenting him at night and almost all hours of the day, taunting him through the vents in his cell. They are literally getting up into the grate and yelling at him. The inmates are taking it in turns doing it. It's really lentless. Twenty four hours a day, different voices, different inmates, all taking turns, screaming at the man who butchered four college students in their beds. And what's Coburger doing? Complaining to the guards that he can't sleep.

9:15 The guard's response, basically nothing. He's in solitary, he's physically safe. The fact that he can't sleep because convicted killers are screaming at him all night, that's not their problem. McDonough says. The inmates are not happy about his notoriety. Translation. Even among murderers, there's a hierarchy, and a guy who stabbed four sleeping college students, he's at the bottom. Here's something that just came out. Phone records show Coburger called his mother multiple times after the murders, not days after hours after six thirteen am on November thirteenth, twenty twenty two, less than two hours after killing Madison Mogan, Kaylee Goncalve's, Zona, Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, He's on the phone with mommy eight fifty four a m. He calls her again, and here's the sick part. Phone records show he was back at the crime scene during this call. He returned to the house where four bodies were cooling and called his mother while looking at his handiwork. In his phone, his parents were listed simply as mother and father, not mom, not dad, mother and father clinical detached like specimens in his sick experiment. Dylan Mortenson, the surviving room mate, gave an impact statement at sentencing that's just now being released.

10:40 Remember she saw him that night, came face to face with the killer and lived. What he did shattered me in places I didn't know could break. I couldn't be alone. I had to sleep in my mom's bed because I was too terrified to close my eyes, terrified that if I blinked someone might be there. New details from that night She heard a male voice say it's okay, Kayley, I'm here for you. Then crying, she opened her door saw a figure in black with a ski mask in the kitchen, about five feet ten inches, standing there like he owned the place. My nervous system never got the message that it is over, and it won't let me forget what he did to them. She carries guilt for not calling nine to one one immediately, for surviving when her friends didn't, for being the one who lived to tell what she saw. Last week, a video surfaced online that appears to show Coburger in his cell. Shot from above, it shows him pacing, walking from one side to the other, placing something on a makeshift rack. The Idaho Department of Correction is investigating. They say it could be fake or AI enhanced. But if it's real, someone inside the prison leaked security footage, that's a felony. But here's what's interesting.

12:02 Even the guards might hate him enough to risk their jobs to humiliate him. Before his conviction, fellow inmates described Coburger's weird behavior, washing his hands dozens of times a day, spending forty five minutes to an hour in the shower, staying awake all night only napping during the day hour's long video calls with his mother. One inmate described an incident where Coburger thought someone insulted his mother during a call. The inmate was actually yelling at a TV about a sports player, but Coburger immediately got aggressive, pressed his face to the bars, demanded to know if the inmate was talking about his mother mommy issues. Much at sentencing, the victim's families told him exactly what was waiting. Christy goncalves Kayley's mother. You are officially the property of the state of Idaho, where your fellow inmates are anxiously awaiting your arrival.

12:56 Aubrey Gone, calls Kaylee's sister in a statement read by her mother. You may have received a's in high school and college, but you're going to be getting big d's in prison. They knew they knew exactly what happens to child killers in maximum security, and they wanted him to know they knew. Here's what still drives everyone crazy. We don't know why the prosecution proved he did it. DNA on the knife sheath, his car, on surveillance, cell phone pings, the surviving roommate's identification overwhelming evidence, But why who was the target? Was it one of them or all of them? Was it random or planned? Coburger's not talking. He took a plea deal guilty in exchange for life without parole instead of death, but he never explained why, never said who he was after, never gave the families that closure.

13:50 Maybe that's his final act of cruelty, letting them wonder forever why their daughters, their sisters, their friends had to die. Two trials, two verdicts, two life sentences. Nicholas Cassotis thought he was smarter than everyone. A navy jag who knew the law. He created an elaborate fiction about a mysterious handler, moved fifty times, told his wife's parents she died in a hospital that doesn't exist. One hour. That's all the jury needed to see through his lies. Brian Cooberger thought he was smarter than everyone, too, a criminology PhD student who knew how investigations worked. He turned off his phone, wore gloves, tried to clean up, but he left the sheath, his DNA his car on camera. And now he's learning that being smart doesn't matter when you're locked in a concrete box with killers screaming at you through the vents.

14:45 Both of them are exactly where they belong. Cassodis will die in a Georgia prison, probably still insisting Jim McIntyre made him do it. Coburger will die in an Idaho prison, listening to the voices in the vents, reminding him every night what he did. They're victims deserved better. Mindy cassotis deserved to live her life free from fear and manipulation. Madison, Kaylee, Zana, and Ethan deserve to graduate, get married, have careers, have kids, grow old. Instead, they're gone, and their killers are learning that life in prison isn't life at all. It's a slow death by concrete and isolation and the constant reminder that you're a monster among monsters. I'm read Carter, and this is celebrity trials. Check your vents, trust your instincts, and if someone tells you they're controlled by a mysterious CIA operative named Jim, run see you tomorrow.