Bryan Kohberger arrested in Idaho killings case
An unsealed affidavit by Idaho police has revealed the horrific murders of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, happened in only 13 minutes. It revealed a cellphone belonging to Bryan Kohberger, 28, was near the victims’ home on a dozen occasions prior to the killings, and that while it was apparently turned off around the time of the early-morning attack, cell tower data place his phone in that region of Idaho shortly afterward. The four victims are likely to have been killed between 4 and 4.25am as two other roommates, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, were in the house, police said.
4.00am
After returning home, the students were asleep or in their bedrooms by 4am, according to roommates.
While Kernodle received a DoorDash food delivery around the same time.
Close to that time, roommate Dylan Mortensen — identified in the affidavit only as “DM” said she thought you could hear Goncalves playing with her dog in her third floor bedroom.
Mortenson, who lived on the first floor, later told investigators she heard another housemate say something like, “there’s someone here”.
An unsealed affidavit by Idaho police has revealed gruesome details of the horrific murders (Image: GETTY/Instagram)
Bryan Kohberger was near the victims’ home on a dozen occasions prior to the killings (Image: AP)
She looked outside her bedroom and didn’t see anything.
Meanwhile, surveillance footage captured near the off-campus house showed that a white sedan — later identified as a Hyundai Elantra — drove by the home three times in the early morning of November 13, returning a fourth time at about 4.04am.
4-4.12am
Mortenson thought she heard crying coming from Kernodle’s room and looked outside again.
That’s when she said she heard a male voice say something to the effect of, “it’s OK, I’m going to help you,” according to the affidavit.
The four victims are likely to have been killed between 4 and 4.25am (Image: Instagram)
Former friend of Bryan Kohberger speaks after Idaho killings
4.12am
Cellular records found Kernodle was using TikTok around 4.12am and therefore likely awake at the time.
It is the last precise timestamp from the night.
4.17am
A security camera just 50 feet from Kernodle’s window at a neighbour’s residence caught “distorted audio” of what sounded like a “whimper followed by a loud thud,” the affidavit said.
The dog in the victims’ home could also be heard barking at that time.
4.17-4.20am
At this point, Mortenson opened her door a third time and saw a masked man in black clothing whom she did not recognize walking toward her and stood in “frozen shock” as he walked past her toward a sliding glass door, the affidavit said. She went back in her room and locked the door.
Investigators believe the suspect then left the home. The document does not say what happened next at the home, or why police were not alerted for several more hours.
Mental health experts say common physiological responses to frightening or traumatic experiences include an urge to fight, an urge to flee, or an urge to freeze.
“The combination of [Mortenson’s] statements to law enforcement, reviews of forensic downloads of records from [Funke’s and Mortenson’s] phone, and video of a suspect video as described below leads investigators to believe the homicides occurred between 4.00 am. and 4.25am,” police wrote in the affidavit.
Kohberger’s car was spotted leaving the area ‘at a high rate of speed’ (Image: City of Moscow Police Department)
4.20-4.25am
The white car was next spotted on surveillance cameras leaving the victims home 16 minutes later “at a high rate of speed,” according to the affidavit.
5.25am
The same car was later spotted on a different camera headed toward Pullman, Washington, the town where Washington State University and Kohberger’s apartment are located.
The affidavit connects some of the dots between the surveillance footage and cell phone data.
Kohberger’s phone pinged communications towers in the region at the same time and in the same areas that the white Elantra was seen driving in the hours after the killings, the affidavit says.
9am
The cell phone data included another chilling detail, the affidavit said: It pinged a cell tower near the victims’ neighbourhood hours after the attack, around 9am.
DNA matching Kohberger was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene (Image: AP)
New evidence unsealed
DNA matching Kohberger was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene. He studied just a short drive across the state border where he is a criminal justice doctoral student at Washington State University, according to the affidavit.
Investigators later closely matched the DNA on the sheath to DNA found in trash taken from Kohberger’s parents’ home in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested last week.
The sheath had a US Marine Corps insignia on it, though there’s no record of Kohberger having served in the military.
An FBI expert identified the vehicle as a 2011-2016 Hyundai Elantra; Kohberger was driving a 2015 white Elantra during traffic stops in August and in October, the affidavit said.
At the time, Kohberger’s vehicle had a Pennsylvania license plate and was registered in that state. That registration was set to expire on November 30, however.
On November 18 — five days after the killings — Kohberger registered the car in the state of Washington, getting a new license plate.
Kohberger had applied to become an intern with the Pullman Police Department sometime in the fall of 2022, writing in his application essay that he wanted to help rural law enforcement agencies collect and analyse technical data in public safety operations, according to the affidavit.
The document does not say if Kohberger was granted the internship.
