There are court documents in the case of Bryan Kohberger
New Insights on the November 13 Stabbings of Four Students at the University of Idaho: A Fifth U.S. State Attorney’s Report
A suspect was taken into custody in connection with the investigation into the murders of four University of Idaho students, two federal law enforcement sources confirmed to CNN on Friday.
After he was extradited from his home state of Pennsylvania, he was booked into the Latah County jail Wednesday night.
A law enforcement source told CNN that the FBI and Pennsylvania State Police made an arrest in the fatal stabbing case.
The brutal nature of the November 13 killings set off a wave of fear and anxiety in Moscow, a small college town on the Idaho-Washington border that had not reported a murder in seven years.
Police say they have received 20,000 tips through email, phone calls, and digital submissions, and have conducted over 300 interviews.
Police have said that the victims spent the evening partying at a university party and then went to a bar and ordered food before they were killed in the morning.
Moscow police say they have worked with a property management services company to remove “potential biohazards and other harmful substances used to collect evidence,” the update said. The property management company will take ownership of the home.
Following the stabbing deaths of four students in November, the tight-knit University of Idaho community was shaken for weeks, but the recent arrest of a suspect may allow the campus to regain a sense of security as students return to classes this week.
An investigation of the crime of Bryan Kohberger in Latah County, Idaho, according to the Washington State University Investigative Post: “Understanding the motives of a suspect’s criminal justice student”
CNN reported that Kohberger is a graduate student in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University.
Police from the university helped with the search of his office and apartment, both located on the school’s Pullman campus.
In June of 2022, he finished graduate studies at DeSales University, where he was an undergrad. The college confirmed to CNN that he got an associate degree.
In a Reddit post removed after Kohberger’s arrest was announced, a student investigator named Bryan Kohberger who was associated with a DeSales University study sought participation in a research project “to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime.”
The professor who CNN reached at DeSales University was one of the principal investigators in the study. The university did not reply to any of the requests.
Investigators also canvassed the area of the King Road house to collect video footage, which revealed a white sedan, later identified as a Hyundai Elantra, traveling toward the home around 3:30 a.m., making several passes by the house, then departing the area around 4:20 a.m. “at a high rate of speed.”
The white car found at his parents house in Pennsylvania was the same car that Kohberger was arrested for, according to the Monroe County Chief Public defender.
DNA: Trash recovered from Kohberger’s family home revealed that the “DNA profile obtained from the trash” matched a tan leather knife sheath found “laying on the bed” of one of the victims, according to a probable cause affidavit released Thursday. The man whose DNA was found on the sheath was identified by the analysis of the trash as the suspect’s biological father. According to the affidavit, at least 98% of the male population would not be able to possibly be the suspect’s biological father.
Moscow police “took a lot of criticism and a lot of heat in those seven weeks after the incident,” University of Idaho Provost and Executive Vice President Torrey Lawrence told CNN. If they had shared more they may have been able to steal the case from them.
“This is not the end of this investigation, in fact, this is a new beginning,” Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said Friday. “You all now know the name of the person who has been charged with these offenses, please get that information out there, please ask the public, anyone who knows about this individual, to come forward.”
Thompson urged people to continue submitting tips, asking anyone with information about the suspect “to come forward, call the tip line, report anything you know about him to help the investigators.”
CNN is reporting that the man charged in the killings of four Idaho college students was tracked by authorities throughout the Christmas and New Year’s period and finally arrested on Friday.
The affidavit was released as the suspect made his first court appearance in Idaho, where he faces four counts of murder and one count.
The suspect has not yet been publicly confirmed as a person with a motive or who knew his victims. Moscow Police Chief James Fry said that the murder weapon had not been found.
A Monroe County Chief Public Defender’s Report of the December 17th Associated Shootings of Four College Students in Boise-Dakota, Idaho
The Monroe County Chief Public Defenders said that he traveled home for the holidays with his father. The family arrived around December 17.
The suspect can return to Idaho without fear of being extradited. It will take some time if he chooses not to, because the police will need to start proceedings through the Governor’s office.
“In particular, this study seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense, with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience,” the post said.
The suspect in the killings of four University of Idaho college students plans to waive his extradition hearing this week, his attorney said, to expedite his return to the Gem State, where he faces four counts of first-degree murder.
LaBar did not discuss the murder case with the suspect when they spohke for about an hour Friday evening, the attorney said, adding that he did not possess probable cause documents related to it and is only representing Kohberger in the issue of his extradition, which the attorney called a “formality.”
“It’s a procedural issue, and really all the Commonwealth here has to prove is that he resembles or is the person who the arrest warrant is out for and that he was in the area at the time of the crime,” LaBar said.
Authorities spent nearly two months investigating before they were able to name publicly a suspect, a task that grabbed national attention and rattled the victims’ loved ones as well as the community – which had not recorded a murder in years.
Before Tuesday’s hearing on whether his client would be extradited, LaBar was unsure of how fast he would return him to Idaho. Within 72 hours, LaBar said he expected Kohberger to be returned to Idaho.
The Case of Bryan Kohberger, 47, a First Degree Murderer in STROUdsburg, Pennsylvania, at the Time of His First Degree Massacre
STROUDSBURG, Pa. — Relatives of a man arrested in Pennsylvania in the slayings of four University of Idaho students expressed sympathy for the victims’ families but also vowed to support him and promote “his presumption of innocence.”
According to his public defender, Bryan is eager to be vindicated and will tell a judge Tuesday that he won’t fight the extradition to Idaho.
His parents, Michael and Maryann, and his two older sisters, Amanda and Melissa, said in a statement released Sunday by his attorney that they “care deeply for the four families who have lost their precious children. Every day we pray for them because there are no words that convey the sadness we feel.
The family said that it will love and support the two of them, and that they will continue to let the legal process unfold. They’ve cooperated with law enforcement to seek the truth and promote his presumption of innocence, rather than judge unknown facts and make assumptions.
Phone records: According to the affidavit, the suspect’s phone was near the Moscow, Idaho home at least a dozen times over the course of six years. The records also reveal Kohberger’s phone was near the crime scene hours after the murders that morning between 9:12 a.m. and 9:21 a.m, the document says. The killings were not reported to authorities until just before noon.
The affidavit for first-degree murder in Idaho will be sealed until he’s returned, prosecutors said. He is accused of a felony in Idaho. The details of the case will be released after his first appearance in an Idaho courtroom.
That document, “will tell us an awful lot,” said CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson. “It will speak to the issue of probable cause – why is he under arrest, what is the justification for holding him and for going after him from a prosecution perspective.”
Kohberger’s family does not want to go to the hearing unless they are there : a public defender whose case was filed in the Moscow Police Department
According to a public defender, Kohberger’s family plans to attend the hearing. They cannot visit him while he is there.
The hours before the attack had been a normal Saturday night of partying for the four victims, witnesses and friends said. Chapin and Kernodle had attended a fraternity party; Mogen and Goncalves had gone to a bar and stopped by a food truck on the way home to their house on King Road. The four were home by 2 a.m. and the rest slept by 4 a.m.
“No. 1: I’m looking for DNA,” he said. Was the residence where he lived his home? … Is there any reason to explain the DNA, is there a basis to know or understand why he would be there?”
Shannon Gray said that the families of the victims would look at the case to see whether there were connections between the victims and the accused.
“We would encourage the community to send any leads or information to the Moscow Police Department regarding any contacts or any information they may have about the defendant and any of the victims in the case,” the attorney said.
The New Jersey Cops: A Case Study of Kohberger, a High-Spin Offender, with a Black Hole Intention
In some instances offenders have been in study areas that prepare them to commit a crime. If he is found guilty, she said, his area of study was not caused by cause and effect, but by studying the criminal mind.
“He’s interested in this, but the ideation of committing a violent crime had to already be there in order to motivate him to commit the crime,” O’Toole said. The purpose of this was to explore what he was interested in doing.
It is not clear why the victims were not arrested until more than six weeks after their deaths. Fry would not reveal Saturday when Kohberger came onto law enforcement’s radar, saying details in the case would be released in time.
Kohberger went home to Pennsylvania for the holidays, LaBar told CNN on Saturday, adding the suspect and his father – who accompanied his son on the cross-country drive – arrived around December 17.
An FBI surveillance team from the Philadelphia field office had been tracking him for four days in the area where he was arrested, according to two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation.
“I was very excited, because it was a celebration of life – the same day that we were doing that event,” he told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga. Goncalves said his wife “wanted to have this event behind us ideally before the event started so she could just focus on our girls, and that’s what happened.”
Three days after his death, a Pennsylvania State Police officer shot and killed a U.P. student from the head: “It’s scary,” a source told the Associated Press
We are going to look at this guy and see what he looks like. He is going to have to deal with us. He hasn’t dealt with us for seven weeks and isn’t about to end.
“We want information on that individual,” Fry said Saturday. We need the updated information so that we can start building that picture now. Every tip is important.
The source said that the man accused of killing the University of Idaho students is currently on a flight to Idaho to be tried for murder.
The suspect finished his PhD student year at Washington State University in Pullman, which is about a 15-minute drive west of Moscow.
Kohberger received a new license plate for his Elantra five days after the killings, the affidavit said, citing records from the Washington State Department of Licensing.
On Wednesday, the police in Indiana released new body camera footage showing that, two weeks before Mr. Kohberger was arrested, the police there had pulled him over twice in a 10-minute stretch for tailgating. The traffic stops, on Dec. 15, came as Mr. Kohberger was driving across the country with his father for winter break in the same car for which he had obtained the new license plate.
Mr. Kohberger’s father told the officer that there had been a “mass shooting.” He was corrected by his son who said that no one was sure if it was a mass shooting or a standoff. “It’s horrifying,” Mr. Kohberger’s father said in the video. That incident involved a man who the police later said had barricaded himself in an apartment and threatened to kill his roommates before a police officer shot him to death.
The Pennsylvania State Police plane touched down at the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport at 6:30 pm and Mr. Kohberger was booked into the Latah County Jail in Moscow.
The Case of a Student Charged with Two Mass Shootings in Bozejski-Kuzmin-Klein Collisions
The deputy said to Do me a favor and don’t follow too closely, and then gave them their driver’s license back.
The roommate, identified in the document as D.M., said she “heard crying” in the house the morning of the killings and heard a male voice say, ‘it’s ok, I’m going to help you.’” D.M. said she then saw a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her,” the affidavit says.
The University of Idaho students’ deaths have been linked to a suspect arrested last week and charged with their murders.
A day later, the lab reported the DNA in the trash “identified a male as not being excluded as the biological father” of the suspect whose DNA was found on the sheath.
Two other roommates were not attacked. The affidavit says that D.M. was awoken by sounds coming from above and thought she was her roommate, Goncalves.
D.M. looked out her bedroom door but didn’t see anything, after which she heard more noises, she told investigators: crying, a male voice saying “it’s ok, I’m going to help you,” more voices, a loud thud, a dog barking.
“The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. The document says D.M. locked herself into her room after seeing the male.
The disappearance of a white car registered to Kohberger during the quadruple homicide of June 26, 2022, in Pullman, Wash
Security footage from Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., which is where the graduate student is, shows a white car that was headed towards Moscow at around 3 a.m., then turning around and going back across the state line.
A police search of vehicles they had registered to students at Washington State University turned up a white car that was registered to Bryan Kohberger, originally from Pennsylvania.
The phone records show that the phone had been near the victims’ home at least a dozen times since June. The phone is near the site of the murders between 9 and 10:30 a.m. according to the document.
The affidavit says that phone records show Kohberger’s phone was near the victims’ residence at least 12 times between June 2022, and now. “All of these occasions, except for one, occurred in the late evening and early morning hours of their respective days.”
Then, at 4:48 a.m., the phone appeared on the network again, pinging along highways south of Moscow, then west across the border into Washington state, and then back north toward Pullman — a timeline that aligned with security footage of the white Elantra, investigators noted.
The disappearance of the phone from the network for two hours was consistent with an effort “to conceal his location during the quadruple homicide,” the affidavit said.
His cell phone pinged cell phone towers in the area of the King Road house at least 12 times before he was killed, and investigators said his classes at Washington State were set to begin on that day. The affidavit said that most of them were late at night or in the morning.
When the phone returned to the area of the crime scene around 9:15 a.m. it was about five hours after the stabbings.
The father of the attacker in the Kohberger affidavit was an organized offender who used the knife sheath on a young man
Body camera footage showed the younger Kohberger driving the car with his father in the passenger seat. The officers let them go though without a ticket after a brief discussion.
The crime lab believes the sample found in the trash is that of the father of the person who left the knife sheath, according to the affidavit.
At least 99% of the male population would not beexcluded from the possibility of being the suspect’s biological father, according to the affidavit.
CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller said that the suspect in the case falls into the category of an “organized offenders” who likely planned and prepared for the attack.
“Leaving behind the sheath of a knife was clearly a mistake … and could have happened for several reasons,” said retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole. The suspect may have had to use the knife right away and pulled the sheath off quickly, or the victims’ responses may have not been what the suspect anticipated, O’Toole said. The offender was also likely in a state of arousal during the commission of the crime, O’Toole added,” and their attention to detail would have waned, at least somewhat causing him to make mistakes.”
One of the roommates told investigators she saw a masked man in the house the morning of the attack, according to the affidavit.
The roommate said she heard crying in the house that morning and a male voice saying, ‘It’s OK, I’m going to help you.’
“D.M. described the figure as 5’ 10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows,” the affidavit says. “The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a ‘frozen shock phase.’
The Kohberger Case: A Crime Scene Scene Report to the Idaho State Department of Law Enforcement, and the University’s Executive Vice President Torrey Lawrence
The same police records also showed Kohberger allegedly wrote an essay when he applied for the police department internship in which he expressed interest in “assisting rural law enforcement agencies with how to better collect and analyze technological data in public safety operations,” the affidavit says.
A law enforcement source tells CNN that the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students thoroughly cleaned his car and was seen wearing surgical gloves multiple times before being arrested.
In one instance prior to Kohberger’s arrest, authorities observed him leaving his family home around 4 a.m. and putting trash bags in the neighbors’ garbage bins, according to the source. At that point, agents recovered garbage from the Kohberger family’s trash bins and what was observed being placed into the neighbors’ bins, the source said.
On the next day, a team of police officers from Pennsylvania moved in on the house. Law enforcement sources tell CNN that breaking down the door and breaking through the windows is a rare tactic used to arrest high risk suspects.
The university’s executive vice president Torrey Lawrence told CNN that there is a great sense of relief, but that it is still a horrible tragedy.
Classes resume on Wednesday following the winter break, and though students who are still uncomfortable being on campus have the option to attend remotely, most students are planning to return, Lawrence said.
“The timing of this for our students was probably good,” the provost said, adding, “Hopefully we can really just be focused on classes starting and on that student experience that we provide.”
In the weeks after four University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in a home near campus, police faced mounting criticism from the public as the investigation appeared to be at a standstill.
In fact, court documents show, a team of local and state law enforcement officers, along with a slew of FBI agents, were working meticulously through the holiday season to catch the alleged killer.
John Miller, a CNN law enforcement analyst and former New York Police Department deputy commissioner, bristled when people wondered if the police had the right man because a PhD candidate in criminal justice would be too smart. You can teach a master’s class how to do a complex criminal investigation from this case.
The Latah County Coroner tells the story of his son and his brother, Michael Chapin, of the Moscow quadruple homicide
There was a lot of blood on the wall, according to the Latah County Coroner. She said there were multiple stab wounds on each body, likely from the same weapon. One victim had what appeared to be defensive stab wounds on the hands.
Moscow police initially told the public the attack was targeted and there was no threat to the community. The police chief changed his mind two days later, saying there is no threat to the community. Many students left town.
Jim Chapin, the father of Ethan Chapin, said in a November 16 statement that the lack of information from the university and local police “further compounds our family’s agony after our son’s murder.”
The statement said that officials should tell the truth, look for the attacker and protect the community.
“It takes a while to put together and piece together that whole timeline of events and the picture of really what occurred,” Idaho State Police spokesman Aaron Snell said on November 22, nine days after the killings. “A lot of this the public doesn’t get to see because it’s a criminal investigation. But I guarantee you behind the scenes, there’s so much work going on.”
Asked what he’d heard from local police, Goncalves said, “They’re not sharing much with me.” He said Moscow police might not be able to share what they have.
This was just part of the behind-the-scenes work in a complex quadruple homicide investigation where any hint to the public about a suspect or the various leads police are following can cause it to fall apart, according to experts.
We don’t want to spook suspects or let them go on the run. Joe Giacalone is an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and was formerly a NYPD sergeant who directed the Bronx cold case squad.
“There’s a lot of people in the public that need to apologize to the police department,” Giacalone said. The Moscow, Idaho, police chief was beaten and he kept moving forward.
Miller agreed: “They were willing to take it on the chin, from the public, from the press, from local critics, in order to keep the case clean and keep the investigation going.”
“For weeks before the arrest, so called experts, pundits and some in the press criticized the Moscow police for not being up to the task and for not having an arrest,” Miller said. “It’s not like ‘Law & Order,’ ‘Blue Bloods’ or ‘CSI.’”
From the morning the murders were discovered, Miller said, the Moscow police knew they needed help and brought in the state police homicide squad and the FBI.
The general public tends to believe that everything happens at once, said retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole. You have investigators from different agencies working together. It is very challenging.
The No-Contact Order of Mark Kohberger in the First Row: Public Defender’s Letter of Innocence, Witness’s Name and Preliminary Hearing
On Thursday, Kohberger smiled at his public defender when he walked into the courtroom and did not appear to make eye contact with anyone else throughout the proceeding, including the families of victims who were crying in the first row and stared at the suspect.
The judge upheld the request of the prosecutors for a two-year no contact order for the victims, their family members and their surviving roommates. He is due back in court January 12 for a status hearing that would precede a preliminary hearing.
The affidavit addresses some of the questions that authorities have not been able to answer, including how to identify a suspect when his appearance is 6 feet tall and 185 pounds with bushy eyebrows, and whether his driver’s license matches the description given to investigators.
But the document also leaves key questions unanswered, including how the suspect allegedly entered the home, whether there was any relationship between the suspect and the victims, why the masked man walked past a surviving roommate and what the alleged motive for the slayings was.
The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said Kohberger was seen multiple times outside his family’s Pennsylvania home wearing surgical gloves.
A cache of items was seized from Bryan’s parents home when he was arrested for the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students.
The revelations come after court documents unsealed Tuesday from Monroe County, Pennsylvania, showed a search warrant was executed at the home at 1:25 a.m. on December 30, following four days of law enforcement surveillance, the documents show.
A pair of size 13 Nike shoes, four stethoscopes, a silver flashlight, a black sweatshirt, black socks and a pair of medical style gloves were taken by the Pennsylvania State Police, according to documents released Tuesday.
During the search, conducted just after 4 a.m. on December 30, law enforcement officials seized the brake and gas pedals, floor mats, seats and seat cushions, headrests, a visor and seat belt. They also took items left in the car, including documents, receipts, gloves and hiking boots, the documents show.
