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New details have emerged from the unsealing of an affidavit describing the evidence that led to the arrest of Bryan Kohberger, the 28-year-old Ph.D. student who is accused of brutally murdering four University of Idaho undergraduates in November. Idaho law dictated that the details not be released until Kohberger returned to the state to face murder charges, which he did Wednesday night.
According to an affidavit from the Latah County Sheriff’s Department, Kohberger was first identified as a suspect because his car matched one caught on security cameras leaving the Moscow, Idaho, campus the night of the murders. Kohberger was enrolled in the graduate criminology program at Washington State University Pullman, located about 10 miles from Moscow. DNA analysis eventually linked him to material left on a knife sheath found on one of the victims’ beds.
Kohberger also vaguely matches a description given by one of the victims’ surviving roommates, who said she saw a man dressed in all black with a mask covering his mouth and nose emerge from one of the victims’ rooms at around 4:00 a.m. and leave through the back door. Before he came out of the room, the roommate said she heard crying and a male voice saying, “It’s OK, I’m going to help you.”
Investigators believe Kohberger may have returned to the crime scene the next morning, when cellphone data tracked his location from Pullman to Moscow again.
There were no new details about Kohberger’s connection to the victims, all University of Idaho students aged 20 or 21. But authorities said his phone had connected to a cellphone tower near their Moscow residence a dozen times in the months leading up to the killings.
Kohberger’s arrest and extradition brought to an end more than a month of fear and unease in the college town of Moscow, where university students, faculty and residents remained shaken and increasingly baffled by the unsolved murders.
Kohberger did not enter a plea Thursday. He was denied bail and will be sent back to the Latah County jail to await a status trial on Jan. 12. He faces four counts of first-degree murder and one burglary charge.
