Newly released documents detail the crime scene, including defensive wounds and Kohberger's DNA link. Photo / Getty Images
Documents released by law enforcement on Wednesday revealed new details about the night Bryan Kohberger killed four University of Idaho students.
The Moscow, Idaho, Police Department’s releases came hours after Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison for the 2022 quadruple murder at an off-campus house.
Many elements of the high-profile case remain unknown to the public, including Kohberger’s motive. Judge Steven Hippler said he would review court documents, from newest to oldest, and consider which to unseal.
Wednesday’s release of more than 300 documents, many redacted, covers many aspects of the case, including events at the house days before the murders, details of what officers saw at the scene, an interview with an inmate detailing Kohberger’s habits while incarcerated, and a police subpoena to see if Kohberger had used Tinder.
Kohberger killed Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, Kernodle’s boyfriend, on November 13, 2022, at the house where they lived in Moscow.
The investigator who examined Kernodle’s body found several defensive knife wounds on her hands in a blood-covered room on the first floor. “It was obvious an intense struggle had occurred,” the investigator wrote in one of the newly released reports. Next to her was Chapin’s body. On the third floor were the bodies of Mogen and Goncalves, described by their families as best friends. The investigator wrote that Goncalves was unrecognisable and Mogen had wounds on her hands and arms.
Kernodle’s body had more than 50 stab wounds, according to autopsy reports released on Wednesday. She, with Mogen and Chapin, died of sharp-force injuries, per the medical examiner. Goncalves’ body was found with more than 20 stab wounds, according to the report. Her body had signs of sharp, blunt, and asphyxial injuries.
Police found at the scene a knife sheath, which would turn out to have Kohberger’s DNA on it and link him to the murders.
One of the two surviving roommates, whose name was redacted, told an officer she heard Goncalves scream around 4am and say there was “somebody” in the house. As the roommate locked herself in her bedroom, she heard Goncalves run from the third floor and down the stairs. When the sound of struggle stopped, she heard a man’s voice say: “You’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna help you.” After a few minutes, the roommate said she peeked out of her bedroom and saw a slim, tall male in a black ski mask leaving the second-floor patio.
The housemates reported odd happenings weeks before the killings, though the incidents were not directly linked to Kohberger. Investigators previously said they found his cellphone pinged near the Moscow house nearly two dozen times in the months before the murders during late-night or early-morning hours.
One of the surviving housemates told police she remembered Goncalves telling her she had seen a “shadow” while outside with her dog, a goldendoodle named Murphy, about a month before the murders. That roommate added that two or three weeks prior to the murders, Goncalves had mentioned that someone was following her. Goncalves’ ex-boyfriend also told investigators about Goncalves saying she had seen a “shadowy figure” when she took Murphy outside.
Police also reported talking to someone who said that she and her friends had lunch with Goncalves a couple of months before the murders and recalled Goncalves mentioning “something about having a stalker”, an investigator wrote. The officer followed up with other friends, who said they could not remember details of the discussion.
A surviving housemate told police that less than 10 days before the murders, they had come home to find a door open with its hinges loose. The housemates went into the house armed with golf clubs but found no one, according to police. Goncalves wasn’t home for that incident.
Pennsylvania law enforcement and the FBI arrested Kohberger at his parents’ home in northeastern Pennsylvania on December 30, 2022.
The investigators wrote that they tried to make sports small-talk in the interview room with Kohberger, who was on winter break from his studies at Washington State University. Kohberger said he wasn’t into football but did like baseball, investigators wrote. He also talked “for some time” about “the beauty of the environment and its relationship to God and a higher power”, investigators said.
But Kohberger shifted the conversation, allegedly telling authorities that he understood why they were “engaging in small talk but would appreciate it if we explained to him what he was doing there”.
When the investigators told him they were there for the Idaho quadruple homicide, they asked Kohberger if he knew about the case, to which they said he allegedly responded, “of course”.
They asked him what he knew about the case until he invoked his Fifth Amendment right, investigators wrote: “Kohberger sat back and said he had the utmost respect for law enforcement but stated it was a constitutional right to speak to an attorney.”
An inmate housed next to Kohberger at the Latah County Jail in Idaho described him as the most intelligent person he’d met while incarcerated, but that he also “quickly became annoying” because of Kohberger’s unusual habits, according to investigators.
Kohberger would wash his hands dozens of times a day and spend 45 minutes in the shower, the inmate told police. He also annoyed the inmate by not sleeping and moving around nearly all night and then napping during the day, according to a police report of the interview.
Investigators tracked down countless tips, including a woman who said she matched with Kohberger on Tinder. The woman told investigators that she chatted with Kohberger for a bit and they had planned to see each other.
She said their conversation came to horror movies, which led to Kohberger asking her what she thought would be the worst way to die, according to investigators. She said a stabbing. Kohberger responded, she told police, by asking her about a Ka-Bar brand knife – the same type investigators say Kohberger purchased before the murders and likely used.
“She eventually stopped talking to Kohberger because his questions made her uncomfortable,” investigators wrote.
A criminology teaching assistant who shared an office at Washington State University with Kohberger in fall 2022 described him to investigators as intelligent but selfish. He also said Kohberger “began to talk much more than usual” after the homicides.
The teaching assistant said Kohberger “attempted to use his authority as a TA to inappropriately interact with female students”, noting that “they talked about Kohberger wanting a girlfriend on many occasions”.