Police and FBI agents have arrested a 28-year-old PhD student several weeks after the murders of four students in an off-campus apartment near the University of Idaho.
The murders shocked the Idaho community. Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, were murdered in an off-campus house on November 13.
The court documents have been unsealed and can be read here.
Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, a Pullman, Washington resident and a doctoral student at Washington State University, which is located only a few miles from the University of Idaho, was arrested early Friday morning in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania at his parents’ home. Police had been tracking his movements and finally nabbed him.
According to the Pennsylvania State police, law enforcement officers broke windows and doors during the execution of the search warrant on the home.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Moscow Police Chief, James Fry said Kohberger would be charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary for breaking into the students’ house to commit a felony.
Kohberger was flown to Idaho on Wednesday night, January 4, and handed over to authorities. He appeared in court on the morning of January 5.
Law enforcement sources said that DNA technology was used to identify the suspect and police tracked him at his parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, more than 2,000 miles away from Idaho, where the crimes were committed.
Police revealed that Kohberger had driven cross-country with his father in a white Hyundai Elantra, the same car that was seen and tracked on surveillance cameras in the vicinity of the house where the murders occurred.
While driving through the state of Indiana, the suspect was pulled over twice on December 15 – once by a Hancock County Sheriff’s deputy and a few minutes later by an Indiana state trooper. He was let through and was not identified by the cops at the time, because he was not a suspect on December 15.
State troopers and FBI agents stormed the Pennsylvania residence at around 2 am on Friday after surveillance of the home for several days.
The suspect studied at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, received his undergraduate degree in 2020, and completed his graduate studies in 2022. He is a teaching assistant and PhD student at Washington State University, registered in the university’s criminology and criminal justice department. The University confirmed that he finished his first semester in December 2022.
Washington University’s security department assisted Moscow, Idaho law enforcement officers in carrying out search warrants at Kohberger’s office and apartment located on the campus on Friday morning. The university said in a statement that they were working closely with other law enforcement agencies in their investigations.
Two other roommates were present at the time of the crime and were not targeted, but police determined that they were not suspects. The two had bedrooms on the ground floor and the murder victims were on the second and third floors.
Court documents were unsealed on Thursday, when Kohberger appeared in court and new details have emerged.
The documents say that the suspect’s DNA was found on a button snap of a knife sheath found at the scene of the crime on one of the victim’s beds. One of the surviving roommates said she woke up and heard someone crying, and saw an unrecognized man wearing a mask, with bushy eyebrows, pass her by at the time of the incident. She also said minutes earlier she heard a male voice say something like, “it’s ok, I’m going to help you.”
Kohberger’s lawyer, Jason LaBar, said that his client believes he will be found not guilty.
During an appearance on the Today show on Tuesday, LaBar said that Kohberger “believes he’s going to be exonerated. That’s what he believes, those were his words.”