In the early hours of November 13^th, 4 Idaho college students were murdered in their beds as they slept. 

The students– Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20 – were killed just days before the school’s Thanksgiving break. They were all stabbed multiple times and were likely asleep when the attack began, a coroner has said. The four were out enjoying a typical night out. Madison and Kaylee were at a bar in downtown Moscow while Xana and Ethan were at a party in a fraternity house on campus. Madison and Kaylee are seen at 1:41 am at a food truck, where they chatted with each other while they were waiting on their food. The food truck owner said that they did not seem to be in distress.  

At 4:00 AM, a neighbor reported that he heard screams, but he brushed it off thinking it was a party. There were parties at their house often so loud noises coming from their house wasn’t uncommon. Another neighbor reported that she had to wear earplugs on the weekends due to the parties that they would throw. 

Just before noon, a person called 911 from the house using one of the surviving roommates’ phones. 

They had awoken to a nightmare. The roommates found the victims on the floor believing them to be unconscious. When they wouldn’t wake up, they called one of their friends over to their house. A 911 call was made on the roommate’s phone, but it was not the roommate who was on the phone. It was reported multiple were on the call.  

Responding officers discovered two of the victims on the second floor and two more on the third. Police reported there were no indications of a sexual assault. Authorities also did not observe any evidence of trespassing or damage.  

The Latah County Prosecutor’s Office stated the suspect(s) specifically looked at this residence, and that one or more of the occupants were undoubtedly targeted. We determined that this was a communication error after speaking with the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office. Although they are still looking, detectives do not yet know whether the home or any of its occupants were specifically targeted.  

According to investigators, two other roommates who were present at the time and managed to live through the attacks presumably slept through them. Police have stated that the roommates are not considered suspects.  

A graduate student at Washington State University was detained on Friday in Pennsylvania in connection with the savage killings of four University of Idaho students last month in their off-campus house, a crime that shook a nearby college town. 

 Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson, a criminal complaint charged 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger with four counts of first-degree murder and felony burglary was filed on Thursday. According to a person familiar with the investigation, genetic genealogy assisted investigators in identifying the culprit. According to the source, DNA samples from Idaho were run through a public database to look for any family ties. Source: Subsequent law enforcement investigation led to the identification of Kohberger after potential family links were discovered.  

 A different law enforcement source stated that the suspect traveled across the country in the white automobile to visit his folks. The insider told CNN, “We were focusing on him being in or heading to Pennsylvania maybe right before Christmas.” 

According to the reports, he had been being followed for four days in the vicinity where he was apprehended by an FBI surveillance team from the Philadelphia field office.  

 Investigators from the Moscow Police Department, the Idaho State Police Homicide Bureau, and the FBI collaborated with prosecutors to establish enough reasonable cause to obtain the order while he was being observed. The FBI and Pennsylvania State Police executed the arrest warrant once it was issued. 

A white Hyundai Elantra was previously mentioned as a possible piece of evidence that Moscow police were looking for. First assistant district attorney Michael Mancuso of Monroe County, Pennsylvania, said at a press conference on January 3 that authorities there had obtained three search warrants: one for Kohberger’s DNA, one for the Hyundai Elantra, and one for Kohberger’s parents’ house, where Kohberger had been detained. 

Additionally on January 3, authorities in Indiana disclosed that Kohberger had been stopped twice on I-70 on December 15. In Hancock County, Indiana, a sheriff’s deputy first pulled him up for tailgating another vehicle. A few minutes later, he was stopped for the same reason by an Indiana State Police trooper, who verbally warned him once more. There was “no information” offered by authorities naming Kohberger as a suspect in the Idaho attacks, according to the ISP and the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office, and neither the license plate number nor the state for the white Hyundai Elantra had been made public. 

In a statement sent to media outlets on Jan. 1, Kohberger’s family expressed their condolences to the four families who lost their children in the incident. “There are no words that can adequately express the sadness we feel, and we pray each day for them. We will continue to let the legal process unfold and as a family we will love and support our son and brother,” the statement said. “We have fully cooperated with law enforcement agencies in an attempt to seek the truth and promote his presumption of innocence rather than judge unknown facts and make erroneous assumptions. We respect privacy in this matter as our family and the families suffering loss can move forward through the legal process.” 

According to Moscow Police Chief James Fry, no murder weapon had been discovered as of Dec. 30. He earlier stated that they think the students were cut with a fixed-blade knife. Additionally, Fry made no mention of Kohberger acting alone. The police chief declared that he thought the neighborhood was “secure” as of December 30 but nonetheless urged citizens to be “vigilant.” What I can say is that the person responsible for these terrible atrocities is in our hands, and I do think our community is safe, he said. Additionally, neither the motive nor the victim’s relationship with Kohberger have been disclosed by the investigators. 

On December 3^rd, he had court in his home state of Pennsylvania. Kohberger admitted to being charged with four counts of first-degree murder as well as a burglary charge during a brief hearing.  

Behind the defense table in the front row of the courtroom gallery were Kohberger’s parents and sisters. As he entered the courtroom, his mother and sister Melissa started crying and embracing each other closely. A box of Kleenex was delivered to them by a sheriff’s officer. As he was escorted out the courtroom, Kohberger gave his family a fleeting glance. Kohberger’s return to Idaho is now anticipated to be arranged by Idaho officials, a move that is typically kept under wraps for security reasons. Until his extradition, Kohberger will be detained in a jail in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. 

Behind the defense table in the front row of the courtroom gallery were Kohberger’s parents and sisters. As he entered the courtroom, his mother and sister Melissa started crying and embracing each other close. A box of Kleenex was delivered to them by a sheriff’s officer. As he was escorted out the courtroom, Kohberger gave his family a fleeting glance.  

 Kohberger’s return to Idaho is now anticipated to be arranged by Idaho officials, a move that is typically kept under wraps for security reasons. Until his extradition, Kohberger will be detained in a jail in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. 

Trash recovered from the Pennsylvania home of Kohberger’s family late last month and sent to the Idaho State Lab for DNA testing revealed that the “DNA profile obtained from the trash” matched a tan leather knife sheath found “laying on the bed” of one of the victims, according to the probable cause affidavit. 

The DNA of the suspect whose DNA was discovered on the sheath “indicated a male as not being precluded as the biological father” according to the garbage. The affidavit stated that at least 99.9998% of men would be expected to be removed from the possibility of being the suspect’s biological father. According to the affidavit that was made public on Thursday, the case’s suspect fits the description of a “organized offender” by criminal profilers, who most likely planned and prepared for the attack, according to CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller. Miller called the suspect’s decision to leave the knife sheath at the crime scene a “rookie blunder.” Other specialists concur. 

“Leaving behind the sheath of a knife was obviously a mistake… and might have happened for numerous reasons,” said retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole. The victims’ responses might not have been what the suspect had anticipated, or the suspect may have needed to use the knife immediately and took the sheath off quickly. The offender was likely aroused at the time of the crime, which would have caused their attention to detail to decline, at the very least significantly causing him to make mistakes, added O’Toole. 

The probable cause affidavit states that one of the two roommates who survived the attack told detectives she saw a masked man wearing black clothing inside the home that morning. The roommate, identified as D.M. in the affidavit, claimed that the morning she “heard crying” in the residence and a male voice saying, “It’s OK, I’m going to help you. According to the affidavit, D.M. reported seeing a “figure walking towards her wearing black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s lips and nose.” According to the affidavit, “D.M. described the figure as 5′ 10″ or taller, male, not particularly muscular but athletically built with bushy eyebrows.” D.M. was standing there in a state of “frozen shock” as the man passed. “The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male,” according to the document, which said the roommate did not recognize the male. 

According to the affidavit, when authorities studied area security footage, they were drawn to a white automobile that was later determined to be a Hyundai Elantra. The vicinity of the killings’ location was where the vehicle was spotted. According to the affidavit, local law enforcement had been alerted to be on the lookout for the vehicle by November 25. Days later, police at the neighborhood Washington State University, where the suspect was a criminal justice PhD candidate, recognized a white Elantra and discovered that it was registered to Kohberger. According to the affidavit, Kohberger’s driver’s license information matched the description the unhurt roommate provided to detectives. Kohberger’s height and weight, 6 feet and 185 pounds, as well as the fact that he had bushy eyebrows, were expressly mentioned in the paper. A white Elantra was discovered in Kohberger’s parents’ house in Pennsylvania at the time of his arrest last week, according to Jason LaBar, the chief public defender for Monroe County, who said Kohberger had returned home for the holidays. 

According to court documents, phone records reveal Kohberger’s phone was in the vicinity of the victims’ home at least 12 times since June. With the exception of one, “all of these incidents took place in the late evening and early morning hours of their respective days.” Additionally, according to the court documents, records indicate Kohberger’s phone was close to the crime site at 1122 King Road between 9:12 and 9:21 a.m., hours after the murders. According to a check of Kohberger’s phone records, his phone left his house about 9 a.m. and traveled to Moscow, and it then returned “to the region of the Kohberger Residence,” reaching there at around 9:32 a.m. 
According to court records, Kohberger applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department in Washington in the fall of 2022. According to data given by a participant in the Pullman Police Department interview process, “we learned that Kohberger’s former schooling includes undergraduate degrees in psychology and cloud-based forensics.” Kohberger submitted an essay as part of his application for an internship with the Pullman Police Department in the fall of 2022, according to the records. In his essay, Kohberger expressed interest in helping rural law enforcement organizations effectively gather and analyze technical data for public safety operations.