Bryan Kohberger DNA found at Idaho crime scene, with Phd criminal justice student following his victims on Instagram along with calling in a recent podcast show where he played a cat and mouse game speculating on the Idaho college murders. Charged with four counts of first degree murder.
A strand of DNA evidence at the off campus home where four University of Idaho students were murdered last month pinned a PhD criminal justice student as the principal suspect in the slayings, Moscow authorities revealed Friday. The development comes as social media traced the murder suspect actively following his victims on social media.
Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, of Albrighton, Pennsylvania upon his arrest Friday morning was taken into custody and held for extradition to Idaho where he now has faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary – which he committed ‘with the intention to kill’ the University of Idaho students.
Moscow Chief of Police James Fry added that Kohberger was taken into custody following a raid at the man’s property by a SWAT team at 3am Friday morning. The raid followed cops surveying the suspect over the course of four days as an arrest warrant was executed.
The man’s arrest and murder charges come as Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, and Xana Kernodle, 20, were stabbed to death in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13 – with Xana’s freshman boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, also killed in the massacre which occurred sometime between 3am and 4am that morning. The victims were murdered after returning from a night out of revelries earlier that evening.
During a press conference on Friday authorities said they narrowed their focus to Kohberger after tracing his ownership of a white Hyundai Elantra seen in the area of the killings.
Phd murder suspect obsessively vegan & heroin junkie
“This is not the end of this investigation. In fact, this is a new beginning.”
Moscow police announce arrest of Bryan Kohberger, 28, charged with murders of four University of Idaho students; he is jailed in Pennsylvania and is set to appear in court next Tuesday. @livenowfox pic.twitter.com/cDxZA4Rdvf
— Josh Breslow (@JoshBreslowTV) December 30, 2022
Phd student DNA found at Idaho crime scene
Investigators had for weeks been looking for a white Hyundai Elantra 2011-2013 model which had been seen parked near the crime scene. The vehicle is thought to have been the same vehicle captured on gas station surveillance footage speeding down the street shortly after the 3.45am crime taking place.
Kohberger’s DNA also matched genetic material recovered at the off-campus house where the students were stabbed to death, law enforcement sources told CNN.
Sources say that authorities knew who they were looking for and hunted the suspect down to Pennsylvania in the Pocono Mountains – more than 2,400 miles from Idaho.
Kohberger was kept under surveillance, with the FBI watching him for four days, while investigators from Moscow Police and Idaho State Police worked to get an arrest warrant.
Moscow Chief Fry refused to rule out that the killer had an accomplice, adding: ‘We have an individual in custody who committed these horrible crimes.’
The posturing comes as Kohberger upon his arrest asked whether ‘anyone else was arrested’.
Details of the killings, and the motive for them, are yet to be released with law enforcement saying a sealed arrest affidavit will be released once Kohberger is extradited back to Idaho.
The Idaho murders suspect, Bryan Christopher Kohberger follows both Kaylee and Maddie on his personal Instagram account and Xana on his Phd Instagram account.
These were not random victims. He stalked and hunted them. There are others pic.twitter.com/oa11NnVqcw
— DeFi nitelyAScam (@DeFi_nitlyAScam) December 30, 2022
Bryan Christopher Kohberger followed the victims on Instagram #idahostudents #idahohomicides
#Idaho4 pic.twitter.com/ImabSBGmeY— Simon (@Simon83520417) December 30, 2022
Actively stalked and followed his victims on Instagram
Nevertheless, social media pointed to Kohberger’s social media accounts which showed the suspect following both Kaylee and Maddie on his personal Instagram account and Xana on his Phd Instagram account. It remained unclear why the Phd student followed both Kaylee and Maddie.
Posted one Twitter user: ‘These were not random victims. He stalked and hunted them. There are others.’
On Friday, a survey created by Kohberger asking ex-criminals how they’d felt while committing their crimes re-emerged online.
As part of his research Kohberger sought to explore how ‘emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime.’
It is understood that Kohberger is a PhD college student at Washington State University, within the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, and did not attend the University of Idaho.
According to the college website, Kohberger attended the college in Pullman – a 15-minute drive from where the students were killed. The school has since removed his profile from their website.
The man arrested in Pennsylvania for the Idaho family slaying, Bryan Kohberger, called in to a true crime video podcast to play an absurd cat & mouse game with amateur investigators. It apparently didn’t work out. Original video @YouTube https://t.co/8ClBbJhpqW pic.twitter.com/dn7GUDbTzC
— Alan Bings (@AlanBings) December 30, 2022
‘if you were going to kill someone, how would you get away with it?’
He graduated from DeSales University in Pennsylvania in May 2022 with a master of arts in criminal justice.
Kohberger sister, Melissa, is a mental health nurse in New Jersey – specializing in ‘trauma’ and ’emotion regulation’. His father filed for bankruptcy in 2010.
Of intrigue, a caller believed to be Bryan Kohberger in a game of ‘cat and mouse’ had recently called into a true crime podcast (see directly above) in which he speculated as to who may have killed the Idaho students.
Recounting an episode with fraternity members, the caller who introduced himself as Dave he told the show’s host being asked by university students, ‘if you were going to kill someone, how would you get away with it?’
Adding, ‘I wonder if maybe, if this is nothing more than some kid in some fraternity trying to prove himself.’
Social media remained divided whether the caller was indeed Kohberger and the uncanny alluding to criminal psychology which the Phd student specialized in. The call led to the host of the channel to send the recording to the FBI as a potential tip.
Friday’s arrest is the first major break in the case which left a community frayed by the brutality of the slayings and fears that there were more imminent attacks as authorities had yet to make an arrest in the days and weeks after the slayings.
A regard of public records shows Kohberger having no prior arrests, raising the question how officials were able to get a hold of his DNA and connect him to the crime scene.
Police are now searching Kohberger’s apartment in Washington – 10 miles from the crime scene – arriving at around 7.30am to cordon off the area. A murder weapon has yet to be located.
This woman gives an account of Bryan Kohberger having a job in security detail at (some University) and that he was a junkie at one point. (Heroin)
Very curious new tidbit. Wonder if he knew the house from long ago interactions? #IdahoStudentsSuspect #Idaho4 #idahohomicide pic.twitter.com/IlQm8t4GPO— Quaker Lady (@ladydigging) December 30, 2022
Unanswered questions
Reports from both the coroner and police confirm that each of the students had been stabbed multiple times in the torso – and were ambushed in their sleep.
Police have found no evidence of a sex crime, and the victims had wounds on their bodies which indicated that they tried to fight off the attacker.
Initially cops said they thought all four were assaulted as they slept, with Goncalves father saying she had the worst injuries from the incident – suffering ‘gouging wounds’ and ‘rips’.
Authorities were left baffled by the brutal killings and repeatedly appealing to the public for help with the case.
The Chief of police at Moscow Police Department himself admitted that investigators did not understand how the two surviving roommates – Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen – appeared to sleep through the attack.
‘Multiple people talked with the 911 dispatcher before a Moscow Police officer arrived at the location,’ authorities said in a previous statement.
When they arrived at the scene, they said, they found Kernodle and Chapin, who were in a relationship, on the second floor, with Mogen and Goncalves sharing a bed on the top floor.
Authorities believe they were all stabbed to death somewhere between 3am to 4am that morning, after enjoying a night out.
Police in Idaho have combed through nearly 20,000 tips and questioned 300 people about the murders of four college students last month.
The update comes just days after Fry told KREM his investigators are still waiting for crime lab results from evidence collected at the scene.
‘We don’t want to rush that,we want to ensure that they’re taking their time to get all of that right,’ the police chief said in an interview Tuesday.
Authorities are still appealing for anyone with information on Kohberger or the quadruple murders to get in touch.
