The community of Moscow, Idaho was on edge for over seven weeks as a result of the tragic killings of four University of Idaho students as police looked for the murderer.
Authorities revealed on Friday that Bryan Kohberger, 28, had been detained in Pennsylvania and charged with four counts of murder and one count of felony burglary in connection with the stabbing deaths of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. They had been mum throughout the initial investigation.
Kohberger waived extradition on January 3, and on January 4 he was moved to Idaho. On January 12, he will have his preliminary hearing and enter a plea to the allegations brought against him. The probable cause affidavit has been made public now that Kohberger is back in Idaho, illuminating the circumstances that resulted in his arrest.
The sheath of the knife used in the stabbings was allegedly left at the scene in the bed where Mogen and Goncalves were discovered dead, according to the affidavit, which PEOPLE has obtained. According to the affidavit, this is where detectives discovered DNA linked Kohberger. According to the documents, agents allegedly took trash from Kohberger’s Pennsylvania house to test for a DNA match.
One of the surviving roommates said in the affidavit that she heard sobbing the night of the deaths and saw the perpetrator, who was described as “a figure covered in black clothing and a mask,” walk past her as he departed the crime site. According to the affidavit, Kohberger’s DNA and cell phone pings connected him to the crime site.
According to the affidavit, a white sedan known as “Suspect Vehicle 1” was seen departing the neighborhood of the home at a high rate of speed around 4:20 a.m. The paper states that between 9:12 and 9:21 a.m., Kohberger’s car and phone arrived back at the scene.
The affidavit claims that throughout the course of looking into earlier cellphone pings, officials discovered that the Kohberger-associated phone had allegedly pinged at least twelve times in the vicinity of the 1122 King Road residence before November 13, 2022.
Except for one occasion, “all of these events took place in the late evening and early morning hours of their respective days,” according to the declaration.
Kohberger was a Ph.D. candidate in criminal justice and criminology at Washington State University at the time of the killings. Eight miles separate the university in Pullman, Washington, from the Moscow, Idaho, home where the four students were killed.
On the day the suspect was apprehended, a white Hyundai Elantra—the identical car police were looking for in connection with the case—was seized from the Kohberger family home.
In the early hours of Nov. 13, University of Idaho students Goncalves, Mogen, Kernodle, and Chapin—all close friends—were fatally stabbed on the second and third floors of the off-campus apartment. Although they were at home during the incident, two additional housemates escaped uninjured. The living room companions were disqualified as suspects early on in the investigation.
The affidavit reveals that one of the two surviving roommates was on the second story of the house, where Kernodle and Chapin were slain. Previously, it was claimed that the two surviving roommates both slept through the attack on the first level of the house.
The affidavit claims that Kernodle was on TikTok on her phone at 4:12 a.m. and had received a DoorDash order at 4 a.m. Chapin was spending the night with Kernodle, his girlfriend, while Goncalves, Mogen, and Kernodle shared a room. The killings’ motivation has not yet been revealed.
Moscow Mayor Arthur D. Bettge commended law enforcement in a statement on Friday for their work on the case that rocked the country.
The statement says, in part, “I understand that the lack of information sharing by law enforcement during the course of the investigation has been frustrating, but their primary duty was to protect the integrity of the investigation and find a resolution to the case for the victims and their families.” “I hope that the victims’ families, our town, and the country will start to feel comfort and closure as a result of this arrest and the accompanying criminal justice system process.”
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